


come out of hiding (i'm right here beside you)

by noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Jon goes Beyond the Wall, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sansa has a daughter, Sansa is widowed, Sansa marries a Dornish prince, but that's not where the story ends, no infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2020-03-08 00:08:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 36,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18884098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth/pseuds/noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth
Summary: AU after 8.05. After the death of Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow chooses to live beyond the Wall, while Sansa Stark, the newly-crowned Queen in the North, marries a Dornish prince.Three years later, when Jon finally gathers the courage to return to Winterfell, he finds that while many things have changed, one hasn't: he's still in love with Sansa.(Featuring widow!Sansa, contrite!Jon, and a cute baby.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'd hoped to finish this before the finale aired but alas, it seems unlikely now. So here's the first part, and (I know I always say this) I think there's only one, at most two, more parts to this.
> 
> Title from "You Matter to Me" by Sara Bareilles, which is SUCH a Jonsa song.

**after the war.**  
**riverrun.**

When Jon tells her he’s not returning to Winterfell, she doesn’t argue. Her eyes, ice blue and unyielding, shed no tears, and when she jerks her chin into a nod of acceptance, there is no tremble in her jaw. “If that’s what you want,” she says, turning away without waiting for a reply.

He almost laughs, though there’s no humor to it. It’s not what he _wants_ , of course it’s not, but after all he’s done, how can he do anything else? With any luck he’ll go as north as north goes and finally the taste of ash will leave his mouth, finally the air will smell of something other than smoke and burned flesh.

The remaining lords of Westeros gather at Riverrun to discuss the fate of the continent, and Jon lingers for a few weeks, long enough to know that the Starks will not be made to bow to anyone else, but in truth the North’s independence is no longer a contentious issue. There is no one left to contest their right to self-governance, and the southron lords will be too busy rebuilding the capital and restructuring the centers of power to deal with the vast territory of the North. Just like that, Sansa is named Queen in the North — as she always should have been — and, after nearly a fortnight of deliberation, she enters into marriage talks with the younger brother of the new Prince of Dorne, a union meant to foster strength and friendship across the kingdoms of Westeros.

Jon warily asks what Arya thinks, but she has no objections to the younger prince; she spoke with him and found no arrogance or spitefulness, no deceit or ill-intent. He was thoroughly decent, she assures Jon, if not especially interesting. Jon notices how respectfully the boy pays suit to Sansa, and he notices how when he speaks with her, Sansa smiles, her voice bright with laughter, her cheeks flushed with merriment. He notices how much happier she is now than she was when all he did was bring sorrow and danger to their doorstep.

Once, Sansa catches him watching her as she sits at the side of her soon-to-betrothed, whispering together over a glass of wine, her hair flowing around her shoulders in a soft fall of shining copper. She glances past the Dornish prince to meet Jon’s eyes, a small frown tugging at her pink lips, but she never says a word and neither does he.

The next day, he is gone.

 

**one year later.  
beyond the wall.**

“What’ve you got for me, Ghost?”

The direwolf lopes toward him, dropping the dead rabbit that hangs from his mouth at Jon’s feet, a fat brown thing that will feed him well. Jon strokes Ghost’s face gratefully, heedless of the blood on his snout, and scratches behind his torn ear. “I missed you, old friend.” It’s been days since he’s seen Ghost, and even though he understands why the wolf must sometimes roam freely through the wilderness, hunting and running further and faster than Jon can, he finds himself increasingly lonely in the absence of his only companion.

It had been madness to send him away when he went south, but everything about that time had been madness.

Jon settles by his small fire to skin and roast the rabbit, turning it on a skewer over the flames until it has just begun to blacken. The smell of it no longer turns his stomach.

When he’d first come here, to this cave and this quiet existence, leagues away from even the free folk who had for the most part settled the Gift, Jon had eaten little more than barely-cooked fish and the hardtack he’d brought with him, and there were days and days when he went hungry and couldn’t bring himself to care. He was so tired. Every time he slept he dreamed of King’s Landing on fire or of killing Daenerys; he dreamed that the woman he’d barely managed to save from rape the day of the sack had been Sansa, and that when he thrust his sword through the Northern soldier’s chest, blood spilled from Sansa’s mouth instead; he dreamed he was deep in the crypts at Winterfell, and when he turned around, his mother stood before him, beautiful with her moon-white face and dark curls, but her eyes were the unnatural blue of the dead.

After two moons, Ghost found him and the dreams eased. Ghost forgave Jon his stupidity, and Jon forced himself to hunt and to explore the area he’d staked out as his own, to build traps and skin animals for their pelts. Sometimes he ventured south, to trade furs and other goods with the free folk, and usually he’d have a few drinks with Tormund too, but his friend always saw through his attempts at joviality. “No one’s meant live like that, not even you,” he told Jon with a sharp, affectionate jab to the shoulder. “Come live with the free folk. We’ve good food to eat and good women to fuck.” But after the third time Jon rejected his offer with a shake of his head, Tormund stopped asking.

It’s said that being too much alone is enough to make a man go mad, but sometimes Jon thinks it is all that has kept him sane. Ghost is all the company he needs. In this wilderness, there is no one to remind him of all the terrible mistakes he has made, there is no one to look at him with the contempt he deserves. Here, in the great nowhere beyond the Wall, he can do no more harm.

He is alone, and he likes being alone. That’s what he tells himself.

It’s later, as he’s eating his rabbit, the juices dripping down he fingers, that he sees something unusual: two dark shapes, _human_ shapes, emerging through the white-cloaked trees. No one comes here, not even Tormund. Jon does not get visitors.

He reaches for his knife, gripping the handle tight and rising to his feet. It’s been a year since he killed anyone — a year since he killed his own kin — and he hates the certainty he feels, deep down, that he can do it still. Easily. His body has not forgotten what it was trained to do.

After a breathless moment, however, he realizes that Ghost, sitting at his side, hasn’t bristled or bared his teeth. Rather, his tail has begun to wag.

Jon squints at the approaching figures, one tall and one much shorter, each clad in heavy furs, and then he hears a familiar voice call out, “You’re not even going to say hello?”

 _Arya_.

All at once he recognizes his sister, though she is tightly wrapped in leathers and furs and a cloak with stitchwork he knows too well, and beside her, the taller figure — his heart leaps — but no, it is a man. It is Gendry.

Pushing down whatever foolish disappointment he feels, knowing he has no _right_ to feel such a thing, he tucks the knife away and moves closer, his arms opening just in time for Arya to step into them. He breathes her in, his fierce and brilliant little sister.

When he releases her so that he might take a look at her, he can’t help but grin. The last time he’d seen her, the deep gash along her hairline had still been healing and her eyes had seemed sunken into her face, deep pits of sorrow even he could not understand, but now her eyes are bright, her face unbloodied. The small scar on her forehead is nearly invisible. She looks healthy and happy, and when Gendry steps near enough to nudge her shoulder with easy familiarity, Jon wonders how much he’s missed since he left.

“What in seven hells are you doing this far north?” he finally manages to say.

“We’ve come to see you, of course.”

“I swore I’d never come to this bleeding wasteland again,” Gendry grumbles, but his smile his fond, “but I’ll be damned if your sister isn’t impossible to say no to.”

Jon barks a laugh and pulls Gendry in for an embrace as well. “It’s good to see you.” He lets go, clapping Gendry once on the shoulder, and asks, “You’re taking care of my sister?”

“She’s taking care of me, more like.”

“Sounds about right.”

Jon turns back to Arya, whose attentions have fallen on Ghost. The wolf lifts his head to give her better access to the spot under his chin. _Shameless_.

“How did you find me?”

“Bran,” she says without looking up.

Of course.

The thought of Bran, however, sends a familiar spike of panic through Jon, that bitter rush of fear, never-ending fear, that he’d felt for so many months as he tried to keep Daenerys from destroying his family, his home. From turning her wrath on her unacknowledged rival. 

“Is something wrong?” Jon tries to keep his voice even. “Is that why you’ve come? Has something happened to Sansa?”

He probably ought to be offended by Arya’s eyeroll, but all he feels is relief, cool as snowfall on his tongue.

“She’s fine. So’s Bran. I just thought it was time for me to visit, see what your self-imposed exile looks like. Find out if you’re still being a complete idiot.” Gendry winces and murmurs Arya’s name in a low, pained voice, but she barrels on. “You don’t belong up here. You never have.”

He tells her the same thing he tells himself: “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Bollocks. You can go home.”

He takes a ragged breath, and when he reaches out Ghost returns to his side, his coat warm as Jon sinks his fingers into it. Ghost’s presence makes it easier to steady himself. “I can’t,” he says finally. “You know I can’t. You were there. You saw — ” He swallows, seeing the way the light fades from her eyes with just those words. “I can’t go back. Not after what I’ve done.”

“Not everything is about you, Jon. Besides, you didn’t destroy King’s Landing. She did.”

“I was there. I helped her.”

“You killed her.”

“Too late. I knew what she was, but I was stupid enough to think I could keep her from — ” He turns away, unable to face Arya any longer. When he speaks again, his voice is harsh. “I came here so I didn’t have to think about these things anymore.”

“How nice for you, to not have to think about it. To not have to remember. I wish I had that luxury.”

It’s almost enough to make him turn back around, and then she continues, “Westeros is still recovering from everything that’s happened since Daenerys Targaryen stepped food on Dragonstone. Since the Lannisters took Father’s head, even. Hiding away like a coward isn’t fixing anything.”

“Maybe,” Gendry says, tentative, his eyes lowered apologetically as he glanced between Arya and Jon. “Maybe, if you think you’ve got bear some responsibility for what happened down there, you could help clean up the mess. The North has taken in thousands of refugees from the south, and more keep coming. No one wants to settle in King’s Landing — ”

“Hard to blame them,” mutters Arya.

“ — and loads of the southern lords aren’t doing well by their smallfolk. They’re trying, some of ‘em, but most have never controlled a territory as big as the Westerlands or the Crownlands before.”

“The North may be cold,” says Arya, “but we’ve got food and land to spare.” She shrugs. “The Reach isn’t doing too bad, though. We were just at Horn Hill.”

The way Arya watches for Jon’s reaction makes Jon wonder if it had been Sam himself who’d asked her to come up here to speak with him. He wouldn’t put it past his friend, but he just asks, “You saw Sam and Gilly?”

“They’re married now and everything. Lord and Lady Tarly, I think it’s a bit much for them both to get used to, but Sam’s mum and sister adore Gilly and they’re all obsessed with the children. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.” 

“The baby. Sam and Gilly’s … it’s all right? It’s healthy?”

“All he does is shit and cry but I guess that’s what babies are supposed to do.” With a sharp smile, Arya adds, “I think he takes after his namesake. He’s so small.” Jon bites back a laugh. “And he wouldn’t stop pouting.”

“He was cute,” Gendry puts in. “He kept pulling Arya’s hair though.”

Letting himself relax ever so slightly, Jon at last beckons Arya and Gendry closer to his fire and his cave. “Come, sit down. It’s nothing fancy but I’ve got fresh rabbit if you’re hungry, and I’ve got more cabbage and potatoes than I know what to do with.” 

The pair move together almost as one, perfectly at ease beside each other, and as Jon looks between them, he wonders if his suspicions are correct. He wonders if it is even his place anymore to wonder. All he says is, “Tell me what you’ve been up to all this time.”

*

They’ve been journeying throughout Westeros, ostensibly as ambassadors for the Queen in the North, though Arya says that she’s more of a spy than a diplomat. Sometimes they meet with the newly-empowered lords and ladies, but more often they speak with the smallfolk, trying to gauge how well the south is recovering and whether the leaders are helping or hurting that recovery. They learn what needs are not being addressed, and ensure that the aid being funneled in from Dorne and the North is being put to good use. It is tiring, thankless work, an endless list of little ways to keep people alive, even thriving, and Arya’s obvious love of what she does seeps into every word.

When Jon asks how Gendry became involved, he learns that apparently, for a little while, Gendry had attempted to rule Storm’s End, but he found he had little enthusiasm for it and none of the necessary training. “I was making an absolute mess of it,” he confesses, so when Arya appeared, inviting him to join her, it had been easy to say yes. “I left it all in the hands of the steward and the locals. By law I’m still the lord, for now anyway, but the people who work the land know it better than I ever could. I told them they’ll get their fair cut of the taxes too. The Estermonts are like to make a claim someday, that’s what Sansa thinks, but — ”

The way Gendry cuts himself off, wincing, his eyes wide and wary, makes it suddenly apparent that Jon is not the only one avoiding the topic of Sansa. Or maybe Arya and Gendry are simply following lead. Since they told him that she’s all right, he hasn’t found the words to ask anything else.

Has it been so obvious?

It must’ve been, for whatever expression Jon makes has Arya resting a hand on his harm. “She’s happy, you know.” She says it gently. “As happy as she can be, at least, with me traveling so much and Bran the way he is and you … gone. She’d never say it, but she wanted us all to stay at Winterfell forever, I think.”

That’s what Jon had wanted too, once. One more impossible dream.

“And her husband?” He hopes his voice sounds normal.

“Symon’s good to her. I still think he’s dull as dirt but I can’t pretend I’ve ever understood Sansa’s tastes, and all that matters is that he treats her right. The Northern lords have come around on him too. They weren’t keen on a southern match at first, but they love their queen so much I think they’d accept anything that made her happy.”

“Good,” Jon hears himself say. “That’s good.”

Arya nudges Jon with her elbow, smirking a little. “You really should think about coming home soon — just for a visit,” she adds before he can protest. “Gendry and I will be there for a few months at least, and Sam and Gilly Tarly are planning to come stay for a while as well, once little Jon is big enough to travel. Even Robin Arryn will be visiting, and he never leaves the Vale. Though in truth I don’t know how happy Sansa is about that.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a bit of a brat, apparently.”

“No, I mean, why is everyone coming to visit?”

“Oh,” says Arya. Either she doesn’t notice the hesitant look Gendry sends her way before his eyes flit to Jon, or she simply ignores it. “To be there when the baby comes.” When she smiles, she bares her teeth like a true wolf.

*

The visitors stay two more nights, joining him as he checks his traps, helping him skin his catches, and sharing meals and lively conversation with him each day, and somehow Jon holds himself back from asking after Sansa’s health, asking how she looks, asking whether she’s begun to think of names. Gendry must suspect the general current of his thoughts, however, because one afternoon, while Arya tracked a fox, bow in hand, he held Jon back a moment.

“What is it?”

“Your sister,” he says, then shakes his head. “Your cousin. The queen. She would love for you to come see her, and her baby, once it comes.”

“How far along is she?”

It takes a moment, Gendry frowning thoughtfully into the distance, but then he says, “Last we were there she’d barely begun to show. She had to press her dress flat to her belly so you could see it. But that was moons ago. Now, she’s gotta be … ” Gendry holds a hand in front of stomach to estimate the size of Sansa’s belly, but before he commits to any particular size, he seems to think the better of it, a flush crossing he cheeks as he glances at Jon. “Pretty far along, I’d say.”

Gods, how many times has Jon imagined just that: Sansa, round with child, more radiant than ever? But in his fantasies — the ones he’d tried not to allow himself, reminding himself again and again that she was he sister — in those sweet imaginings, Sansa was Jon’s wife, her child was his child. That had been a different Jon, though, a Jon who’d never let a tyrant threaten those he loved most, a Jon who’d never stood by as someone rained down all seven hells on a city of innocents.

It had been a different Sansa too, one who looked at him with warmth, with affection. One who trusted him, as she could no longer do. As she _should_ no longer do. 

“Jon?”

“I’m happy for her,” he says finally. “She deserves this, a family of her own. A husband and a child. She deserves happiness.”

The morning Jon sees his visitors off, he shakes Gendry’s hand and then he holds on to Arya a long time. “I’ve missed you, little sister.”

“You too,” she says.

“You’re welcome to visit me any time.”

“No,” she tells him. “You need to come home.”

He watches them disappear into the distance, heading toward what remains of the Wall, and when Ghost cocks his head to look at him, the question clear in his red eyes, Jon scrub a hand across his face. “I know, boy,” he says. “I know you think we should be with them. But I can’t.”

 

**two years later.  
winterfell.**

Meria begins to stir from her nap just as Sansa is about to hear the day’s final petition, and the weight of her little body, growing heavier by the day, shifts uncomfortably on Sansa’s lap. “Shh, my love,” Sansa murmurs, stroking Meria’s thick black curls, hoping to stall any upset until the day’s business is done. “Just a little longer, I promise.” 

Sansa glances back up at the man awaiting her attention, a ruddy-faced builder who’d moved north after the fall of King’s Landing. His name, she recalls, is Roland. Shortly after he came north, he’d been working tirelessly on the repairs to Winterfell when he’d fallen from a piece of scaffolding and broken his leg, and Sansa had arranged it so that he and his wife neither starved nor lost their home while he recovered. Since he resumed his work, however, he’s had no cause to meet with Sansa, until today. She wonders what brings him here.

“My apologies,” Sansa tells him. “My daughter’s nurse is ill, and Meria hasn’t taken to the new girl like I’d hoped. I’ve been driving everyone mad by bringing her to all my meetings.”

The smile Roland gives her seems genuine. “Not at all, Your Grace. It’s my good fortune to see the princess. Gods bless you both. It was a sad day indeed when the North lost King Symon.”

Sansa bows her head in acknowledgment, but she cannot quite bring herself to smile. The thought of Symon still pains her, though it’s been almost a year. “What can I do for you today?”

Without any more preamble, Roland explains that he has been appointed by the builders to bring to her attention a plan they’ve come up with for improving and eventually completing the hasty repairs that had been done to the crypts in the aftermath of the Battle of Winterfell. Sansa had ordered that the bodies be cleared out and burned, and the crypts that had been broken open were to be sealed up again, but, she’d said, other repairs had to take precedence. She hasn’t spoken of it since, and it seems that finally the castle’s builders and stonemasons are beginning to wonder about it.

They’re right to wonder, she knows they are. The truth is, she hasn’t been able to return to the crypts since the night of the battle, when she’d confronted beings that she’d understood, even then, in the midst of her terror, were the corpses of her kin. Some part of her is still afraid of what she will find down there: the monument to her father cracked, a broken slab that means he’d been one of those who’d risen from his grave? If not her father, what about her grandfather, or Rickon, or Aunt Lyanna?

When Symon died, the one small comfort she had was that there’d been no need to visit the crypts, for she returned his body to Dorne, where he had been laid to rest amongst his own family. Services were held for him in the Sept of Winterfell (though Symon admitted to skepticism, he’d still kept the Faith of the Seven), but his bones did not belong to the North.

Sansa had sent a scroll to Symon’s brother alongside his remains: _He is my husband and the father of my daughter, but he is a Dornishman and deserves to be buried as such. Just as the North in is my blood, the Dornish sun is in his. I promise you that when Meria is old enough, she will visit her father’s grave and know her uncle’s family. Though her name may be Stark, she will always know who her father was and know that Dorne is a part of her too._

The sound of Meria babbling loudly, her chubby fists winding in Sansa’s skirts, snaps Sansa back to the present. She realizes that her attention has slipped from the plan Roland has been presenting, and forces herself to hear the rest of what he has to say, knowing it is nothing but reasonable. The crypts cannot be left in disarray forever; it is disrespectful to her ancestors, to the entire Stark line. In time, Sansa intends to be buried there too, at her brother’s side, for her own daughter to visit her someday.

“Thank you,” she says to Roland a few seconds too late, but he’s still smiling at her. “I will think on what you’ve said. However,” she decides to add, “I think any repairs to the crypt should wait until my sister is home.”

Arya will help Sansa through this too. She’s helped her through everything else these past years: Symon’s death and the weeks of illness that preceded it; the long months of her pregnancy, when all she wanted was her mother; the terrible anxiety of her third marriage and her third trip to a marital bed; and, of course, the heartbreak of Jon Snow leaving them all behind. If nothing else, Sansa could use Arya’s unflappable calm the first time she returns to the crypts where she’d almost died. 

After Roland is gone, seemingly satisfied with the result of the meeting, Sansa sets Meria down before standing and sighing, rolling her neck to work out the knot of tension at the top of her spine. “Brienne?”

The knight steps out from behind Sansa, where she’s been standing all afternoon. “Yes, Your Grace?”

“Will you take Meria for a moment? My shoulders are aching and I’d love to take a walk through the godswood before it gets dark.”

Brienne lifts Meria easily from where she’s standing, one fist still wrapped in her mother’s skirts. Brienne shows none of the discomfort with the girl that she once did. When Meria was first born, Brienne had been terrified to hold her, afraid somehow that she would do it wrong, that her mere touch might break the girl. Since Symon’s death, however, Sansa has seen how Brienne has come to care for Meria — not simply as the daughter of the woman to whom she is pledged, nor as an innocent and a princess of Winterfell, but as a person unto herself, brilliant and funny and sweet, with her honey-brown eyes that peer out of a face so like her father’s and her laugh that can bring a smile to even the dourest of faces.

Once, when Meria was still very small, Sansa had asked Brienne, “Do you want children?”

“I know better than to want them. I know better than to even imagine it.”

The words touched something within Sansa’s chest, and despite knowing the question might cause her friend some pain, she asked, “Even … even with Jaime Lannister? You never imagined it with him?”

Brienne had sighed, peering down at Meria in her crib, perhaps trying to avoid Sansa’s eyes, before she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I imagined with him. More than he gave and less than I got, I think. But no, I don’t think children crossed my mind.”

Now, Meria is hitched on Brienne’s hip, on the side where her sword doesn’t rest, and the image is so incongruous and yet so natural that Sansa almost wants to ask her sworn shield once again whether this is truly the life she wants, if she would not rather find a husband, bear a child, be a mother, or if one faithless lover has made it all too bitter now. 

Instead, Sansa leans down to drop a kiss on her daughter’s head and says, “I’ll be back soon. I just need some fresh air.”

*

The crisp springtime breeze fills Sansa’s lungs, fresh and sweet with the scent of new flowers at last beginning to bloom, jonquils and gillyflowers and pale pink roses so unlike their wintry sisters. Despite the wet of the rain and the sludgy pools of mud growing larger as the snow melts, spring in the North is beautiful, and even the occasional spring snow is dear to Sansa, a powdery fall, light as dust, that veils everything in shimmering layer of gossamer white.

She has always loved the spring. Once, she’d feared she’d never see it again.

In the godswood, Sansa avoids the heart tree, not wishing to disturb Bran, and instead she winds through the ashes and hawthorn trees, her ungloved hand brushing the cool bark. Even now she thinks there is no place as peaceful as the godswood. She’d like to soak in the hot springs, and for a moment she allows herself to imagine slipping out of her dress, letting her tired body relax in the pools, but today, she can only imagine. She’d promised she’d scarcely be gone a quarter of an hour.

Maybe she can treat herself once Alessa, Meria’s nurse, is well again, or when Arya and Gendry return from their travels across the Narrow Sea. Surely they won’t be away much longer. They’ve already been away longer than Sansa expected.

For a long time after Symon’s death, Arya had been wary of leaving her. “You shouldn’t be alone,” she’d said in that fierce way she had, her hand gripping Sansa’s, and Sansa had reminded her, “I’m not alone.” She has Meria, and that’s better than anything.

Some days it is hard not to wish Symon was still here too, though. She’d relied on his steady presence, his easy humor, his ability to win over suspicious northerners and charm even someone as prickly as Arya. He’d been a true partner to her in everything, always at her side in the Great Hall and in council meetings, or accompanying her on trips into town to bring bread and blankets to the needy; always waking with Sansa to see to Meria in the night, even though it was Sansa’s breast that fed her and Sansa’s arms that rocked her back to sleep. He’d sit at Sansa’s side, singing softly or simply holding her hand, and he would not go back to bed until she did.

It had not been love between them, not really, but someday it might have been, if only they’d had more time.

A sharp gust of wind rustles the trees and pulls a few tendrils of her hair loose. Time to get back to the keep. She has accounts to look over before supper, and a meeting with the steward after that. Hopefully Brienne won’t object to minding Meria a bit longer, if Meria truly won’t tolerate the nurse who’s been working in Alessa’s place.

When Sansa steps out of the godswood gate, however, she freezes in place, not quite able to believe what she is seeing. Standing before her is a massive, white direwolf, its red eyes all too familiar.

If Ghost is here, she thinks, but the second part of the thought flies away before she can catch it. It takes her another moment to understand the strange feeling in her stomach, a pit that aches so sharply it takes her breath away.

If Ghost is here, she tells herself slowly, then so is Jon.

*

The day after Jon left, Sansa locked herself inside her room at Riverrun, unwilling to show her tears to the assembled lords of Westeros and afraid Symon might guess at the reasons for her sadness. Arya must’ve suspected, at least, for though she treated Jon’s decision to leave with contempt, she remained steely-eyed in the face of his departure, and in the days that followed, her gaze followed Sansa, more watchful, more _canny_ , than ever before.

Sansa had been so stupid, believing that with Daenerys dead and the North free, Jon would never choose to go anywhere but home, to be anywhere but with his family, with _her_. He’d told her that he’d never loved Daenerys. He’d said it had all been a desperate attempt to bring her north, and then to keep her from destroying Winterfell and everyone in it.

But she’d seen him herself, the way he smiled at Daenerys during the feast, warm and open, and how he’d ridden on dragonback at Daenerys’s side, like something out of a song. He’d called her a good queen. He’d refused to answer when Sansa asked if he bent the knee for love. And after he killed Daenerys, he’d never looked more broken.

She ought to have expected that he would leave. Her affection meant nothing to him, and if he knew about the feelings she could not suppress, they would only make him uncomfortable. In those last few days at Riverrun, he could barely meet her eyes. Of course he saw her as nothing but a sister, maybe less than that even. Of course he didn’t care if she married someone else, and there was no meaning in the way his dark eyes tracked her when she talked and smiled and danced with Symon. 

If he would rather disappear into the wilds of the North than stay in his home with his family, then that was fine. She wouldn’t stop him.

For three years she had heard nothing from Jon, nor nothing of him; she married and gave birth and became a widow, and not once did she receive even a hint of a word from him, and in time she came to accept that there was every chance she would never see him again. She’d learned to live with that possibility.

But now, for no reason she can fathom, he is _here_.

She recognizes him at once, though his hair has grown past his collar and his beard is in need of trimming, though his lips and cheeks are wind-chapped and the lines around his eyes have grown deeper. It doesn’t matter: he is Jon, unmistakably Jon, and the sight of him lights a fire in her belly, hot enough to hurt.

His eyes widen when he catches sight of her crossing toward him in the yard, Ghost at her side.

“Sansa.” The word leaves him in a soft exhale, and then the corner of his mouth twitches. “I knew Ghost would find you.”

“What are you doing here?”

It comes out more harshly than she intends, and the way his face falls almost shames her, but, she reminds herself, he’s the one who left. Even if some part of her wants nothing more than to throw her arms around him and hold him tight, to press her cheek to his shoulder and feel the steady thump of his heart against her palm, she must hold herself back. She mustn’t let him see what him being here does to her.

His eyes flicker between hers, before finally lowering to the ground. “I — ” He clears his throat, his voice hoarse. “I’d hoped — that is, I know I’ve made a bloody mess of things.”

“A _mess_?” 

The shrill note in her voice has some of the guards turning to watch them curiously, and before Sansa can think better of it, she takes hold of Jon’s forearm in a hard grip and drags him toward the kennels, out of sight of the many people milling about the yard.

“Jon.” She realizes she’s still holding onto his arm and quickly lets go, pulling her hand back to her side. “It’s been three years.”

“I know.”

“The realm was in utter chaos and you just … left. You left it for everyone else to deal with, so that you could, what, freeze your toes off and brood about Daenerys?” At that, he winces, but before he even opens his mouth, she adds, “And you left behind more than just a mess. You left your family. You left — ” _Me_. “Us.”

He exhales sharply. “I know. Gods, I know.”

The dark warmth of his eyes is too familiar, too tempting. How many times has he turned those eyes on her and she’d simply forgiven him anything? All he had to do was look at her and she’d given him her trust, her faith, her love. Foolish girl.

She forces herself to look away. “Why have you come back, Jon?”

“I thought leaving was the best thing I could do for all of us. I was a coward, I know I was. After everything that happened, it was too much. It felt like I ruined everything I touched. That’s not a good reason, I know that — ”

“That’s why you left.” She hears his stutter of breath, but doesn’t dare look at him again. “I’m asking why you’ve come back. Why, after all this time, come here?”

In his voice there is a too-familiar ember of frustration. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Sansa. I know I fucked it all up. But every time I thought of you — ” He breaks off, and she finally looks at him, but now he is the one avoiding her eyes. “I missed you.”

She holds herself steady, willing her heart to slow within her chest. He cannot see what his presence does to her. She can’t let him. It is the only scrap of protection she has left.

“I visited Tormund a few weeks ago. We drank, too much. He asked about you. He said, ‘What happened to that pretty sister of yours, the one who was kissed by fire?’” Jon’s voice takes on a stronger burr as he imitates his wildling friend. “He said that the day you turned up at Castle Black, that was the first time I actually looked alive after my brothers killed me.” He takes a shuddering breath. “He was right. If you hadn’t shown up when you did … ”

Sansa knows exactly what he means, because she’s had the same thought too, more times than she can count. If she’d ridden exhausted through the gates of Castle Black only to learn that Jon had already departed, or worse, that he was dead, she can’t imagine what she would’ve done. She hadn’t realized until she threw herself into his arms how much she needed him at that moment, how much his touch could heal. It was only after he held her that she found the strength to demand they take back Winterfell.

“What did you tell him?” she asks finally. “Tormund?”

“I told him you were at Winterfell, a queen now, and you’d married, you had a child. That it had been a long time since I’d seen you. Do you know what he said? He said, ‘Then what are you doing here?’”

She ceases massaging her palm and looks up at him in surprise, raising an incredulous eyebrow. “You finally came home because _Tormund_ told you to.”

“I came home because I didn’t have a good answer to his question. I knew why I left. Cowardly as my reasons were, I knew them. But I don’t know why I stayed away. Except … ”

“Except?”

“I didn’t know if you’d want me back.”

She has to cover her mouth to stifle the sound that comes out, half laugh, half sob. “Then you don’t know me.”

“Aye.”

He looks properly ashamed now, and she takes some grim satisfaction from it, but then he reaches out to sink his hand into Ghost’s fur and closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, Sansa. I’m sorry. I should’ve come back a long time ago. I should’ve been here to help fix everything I’d destroyed.” When he meets her eyes once more, she can’t make herself turn away. “After Arya came to see me, I wanted to, but — ”

“Arya? When did Arya visit you?”

“Years ago. You didn’t know?”

Sansa shakes her head.

“She came to yell at me and tell me I should come home. I knew she was right, but she told me how happy you were with your husband and how you had a babe on the way, and … ” It’s obvious he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence, but she keeps staring at him, willing him to find the words. He can do that much for her. “I didn’t know what place I would have. I worried I would make things difficult. I’m a king who gave his crown away. I’m a traitor. And I’m … I’m not your brother. Your husband would have every right to send me away.”

She’d like to deny it, that Symon would’ve done no such thing, and it’s true that he never would have imposed his will on her. Yet it’s foolish to pretend Jon’s presence would’ve been an easy thing between them. Symon was her king but Jon had been _the_ king, the one chosen by the people. Already Symon had felt like an outsider in the North, though he tried to hide it from her, and if Jon were there, things could only have been more uncomfortable. Worst of all, Sansa fears that with Jon at Winterfell, the slowly budding marital affection between herself and Symon, the relationship that she’d been trying to build stone by stone, would’ve amounted to nothing.

Jon huffs a little breath, his cheek dimpling in a smile. “I s’pose he still might.”

It takes her a moment to understand what he means, and when she does, she flounders for words. Does he truly not know? Though she supposes if his only company is the wildlings, why would they have any cause to know about the goings-on of the kneelers and their kings?

“Jon.” He must hear something of the truth in her voice, because his brow furrows, his lips pursing in concern. “Symon died almost a year ago.” She blinks away the wetness in her eyes. “I am a widow once more.”

*

She arranges for servants to prepare his old chamber, to air it out and replace the linens. In the meantime, she brings him to her quarters, ordering a meal to be brought up and a bath to be readied. His clothes need to be cleaned, if not simply burned, every garment muddied and dank with sweat and the smell of damp wolf. She finds some of Symon’s old things and lays them out, hoping they will fit well enough, even though Symon had been half a head taller than Jon.

“What of my own clothes?” he asks, lifting the breeches.

“I … I took them apart for the materials. Many things were scarce just after the war.”

She’d also found a kind of terrible pleasure in ripping the seams from every tunic she ever sewed for him, in turning every pair of breeches and every stocking and every cloak into scraps, but she needn’t tell him that.

“I’ll make you something new soon, or at least I can tailor something to fit you better, but this will have to do for now.” She turns to Jon, her mouth drying a little at the sight of him. He’s removed his cloak and his jerkin, down to his tunic and breeches, and she can hardly tear her eyes from the solid shape of him, the muscles she can see in his arms, the breadth of his chest. She licks her lips. “I have things to attend to, so I’ll leave you to it. When your chamber is ready, someone will come by to let you know.”

“Sansa,” he calls before she can make it out the door, and she glances back over her shoulder. “Will I see you again tonight?”

She hesitates for just a moment, but then she nods. “Tonight,” she promises, stepping through the doorway and into the corridor, her heart lurching in her chest, an impossibly tender thing, doomed to be broken once more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual, my plan for a concise two-part story has spiraled out of control. I'm currently feeling relatively confident there's only one part left in this after this one but, honestly, who knows.

Winterfell looks almost as it did in his childhood. When Daenerys ordered him south, the castle had still been devastated by dragonfire and the army of the dead, but now its walls stand strong, the damage repaired, and all those who dwell within look hardy and hale, with full-enough bellies and warm-enough clothes. It is hard not to remember the miserable gray faces he’d left behind, the half-broken people he’d abandoned to fight another war — people he’d sworn to protect. The rest of the Northerners, he’d led into that massacre, where they’d raped and killed as ruthlessly as any Dothraki horde. 

Gods, he never should’ve been their king. It always should’ve been Sansa.

Sansa. He closes his eyes and lets himself relive the moment he saw her again, lovely and graceful, her body fuller, her hair longer, a crown encircling her brow. She’s always been so regal, as poised as her lady mother and as good-hearted as her lord father, but now there is no question that she is a _queen_.

A queen, and a widow, and a mother.

He told her that his return to Winterfell had been at Tormund’s prompting, and that wasn’t a lie, but nor was it the whole story. He has not said why Tormund was so insistent Jon leave his half-life beyond the Wall.

After settling the Gift, Tormund finally gave up on winning Brienne’s affections and decided it was time to steal himself a wife, a woman named Hylla who was sturdy as an oak and quick with a dagger, and whose barks of laughter somehow overpowered even her husband’s. She suits Tormund, and she likes him, and not one moon ago, she gave him a fat, fire-kissed babe with pink cheeks and a wail like a howl.

During Jon’s latest visit to the freefolk, Tormund had insistently pressed the wee thing into his arms, a tiny pink bundle that squinted at him and yawned — and Jon, hardly knowing why, had wept.

Tormund’s response had been to roll his eyes and drain his drink in one long gulp. “For fuck’s sake.” He wiped the back of his hand carelessly over his mouth, barely touching the droplets of goat’s milk that had collected in his beard. “I’ve held my tongue long enough. You, Jon Snow, need to steal a woman and make a son or two of your own.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t? Bah. You’ve still got a working pecker, don’t you? How much more of your life are you going to waste on that mad aunt of yours?”

Jon’s jaw had tightened but he hadn’t bothered to protest. He suspected Tormund knew it was never as simple as that. Jon had only ever told Sansa the truth of his shameful deception — the manipulation, the _lies_ , how much of himself he had given away to Daenerys, piece by piece, until there was almost nothing left — but Tormund, who’d seen him love and mourn Ygritte, had done little more than raise an eyebrow when Jon confessed to murdering his queen.

With a long sigh, Tormund had handed Jon a full tankard of ale, swapping it out for the boy, which he took into his own arms. “Listen to me, Jon Snow. Drink and listen.” Even now, weeks later, his words are sharp in Jon’s memory. “You didn’t die with the dragon queen, and I know you didn’t _want_ to die with her either, so stop pretending like you did. You’re not fooling anyone.”

He was right, of course.

True, some part of Jon still believes it is wrong that he lives when so many are dead, that he ought to have perished with Daenerys, snuffed out all of the Targaryens in one go. Part of him still believes that as much as he loathed her, surviving her is a crime for which he has no excuse. And yet because he lived, he saw Sansa named Queen in the North; he hugged Arya and Bran once more, finally certain of their safety; he reunited with Ghost, his truest friend; he held Tormund’s son. He cannot regret that.

Nor can he now regret that he has lived long enough to meet Sansa’s daughter.

Sansa brings the child with her when she comes to his chambers that evening, carrying her hitched on her hip, an arm braced around the girl’s back. “Meria,” Sansa says softly, and the girl peers up at Jon, round-cheeked and curious. “This is your … ” Sansa’s eyes dart to Jon’s and then away again. “Your uncle. Like Bran and Gendry. His name is Jon.”

Meria stares at him, her golden-brown eyes, olive skin, and dark curls very like those of her Dornish father. Jon remembers the man well. He’d been handsome, if not quite as dashing as the boys Sansa used to admire, and it was apparent to anyone at Riverrun that they would make a handsome couple — and, very likely, a happy one. Jon had known he didn’t need to protect Sansa from this suitor, and he’d been ashamed of his desire to put himself between them anyway.

The entire ride to Winterfell, he’d been preparing himself to meet Symon again, to behave properly toward him and Sansa. But he is dead, and Sansa remains, raising their child alone.

“Jon.” Sansa slides the girl off her hip and helps her to stand on the ground, but, perhaps because she’s a little wobbly on her feet, Sansa keeps hold of her hand. “I present Meria Stark, Princess of Winterfell.”

Meria grabs a fistful of her skirt and bends her knees in an approximation of a curtsy. Jon almost snorts. Of course Sansa taught her child to curtsy as soon as she could walk. Instead of laughing, however, he finds his heart is caught in his throat.

“She’s beautiful,” he says finally. “Gods, Sansa. She’s — ” His voice breaks, his eyes beginning to burn, and he finds he can’t look at Sansa any longer, so he clears his throat and drops down to sit on his haunches, offering Meria a small smile. “Hello, Princess. I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

“Uncle?” Meria asks, her brow wrinkling adorably.

“Aye. I’m your uncle.”

She considers him a moment more, mouth pursed as if in skepticism, before she breaks away from her mother, taking one toddling step forward, then another, as she extends her hand to him. 

He blinks. Does she want him to hold it? He glances at Sansa in bewilderment and finds her suppressing a smile.

“She wants you to kiss her hand. It’s what Gendry always does when he visits. He spoils her rotten.”

Jon has to push away the pang of jealousy, that Gendry already has a place in this child’s heart. It’s his own bloody fault and he can berate himself for it later. For now, he awkwardly takes Meria’s chubby hand, so small and warm, and dropping to one knee, he says, “My princess,” before kissing the back of her hand as if truly were his sovereign. 

She beams. “Uncle.”

Before Jon has the chance to reply, however, the girl’s eyes widen — fear, or maybe just surprise — and she stumbles back toward her mother, who gathers her into her arms just as Ghost approaches. It’s easy to forget how frightening Ghost can be to those who don’t know him.

But Sansa doesn’t hesitate to stretch her free hand out to Ghost, who nuzzles into her. “This is Ghost,” she says to Meria. “He’s good, see? He’s Uncle Jon’s friend.”

“He’s your friend too, Princess. He would never hurt you.” Jon lays a hand on the neck of the massive wolf, not far from where Sansa’s fingers have sunk into his fur. “Would you like to meet him?”

A moment of hesitation, but Meria is as brave as her mother, and she reaches out to touch Ghost’s muzzle. She gasps delightedly when Ghost licks her hand.

“He can tell you’re family,” Jon says, and Meria turns another impossibly bright smile on him. “He’ll take care of you.”

Sansa lowers Meria to the floor once more, and this time, the girl steadies herself against Ghost, all but throwing her arms around him as she leans into his solid mass of muscle and fur. Ghost’s red eyes flicker toward Jon, almost reproachful, but Jon knows the wolf doesn’t really mind, not when the girl holding him a little too tightly is Sansa’s daughter. 

“I always knew you’d be a good mother,” Jon says.

“You don’t know that I’m a good mother.”

“Of course I do.”

For a brief moment, Sansa tries to look irritated, but then her cheeks flush pink and the corners of her mouth turn up. “It helps having such an easy-tempered child,” she admits, finally offering him a true smile. “Not all children are so sweet, especially at this age. Gods, do you remember how terrible Rickon — ” She breaks off, her smile fading, and he cannot bear to look at her. 

Rickon. Just one more person he failed.

“I remember.”

A tense moment, and then she clears her throat. “Have you settled in all right? I’ll have some clothes for you tomorrow — they won’t fit perfectly, but — ”

“It’s fine. Everything is. Thank you, Sansa.”

“Of course. Whatever you may believe, Winterfell is still your home.” He dares to let his eyes flicker up, meeting hers for a brief, paralyzing moment. Those eyes: he dreams of them, he drowns in them. They are clearer and brighter than he remembered. “Winterfell will always be your home.”

*

No more than a quarter of an hour passes before Sansa lifts Meria into her arms once more, combing a hand through her curls and peppering her face with kisses. “All right now, sweetling, it’s time for you to go to bed. Will you be good if I have Brienne take you to the nursery?”

Meria offers no reply except a giggle, but Sansa doesn’t seem to mind, and when she calls for Brienne, the lady knight opens the door and takes Meria into her arms with practiced ease. “Tell the nurse I’ll come by later to settle her if she’s fussing.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” In the doorway, Brienne’s gaze slides over to Jon for no more than a second, but the hardness in her eyes startles him. “Good night, Your Grace.”

Then the door closes, and Jon and Sansa are alone.

He offers her wine and pours himself a cup too, hoping the taste of it will set his nerves at ease. Sansa sits before the fire, staring into the flames and cradling her goblet, her lips growing redder with each sip.

He remembers another night, long ago, after the Night King had been defeated and Jon had allowed himself to believe, for one stupid, blissful moment, that the worst was over. He remembers laughing and drinking his ale, while Sansa sat across from him, her cheeks glowing, her eyes bright, and she’d seemed so _happy_ just then, to be there, alive, with him. Then — then he’d turned away for the space of a breath and she was gone. Later, he’d returned to his room, woozy and drunk and wondering if he ought to find her, track her down, finally tell her everything. About his parents, about Daenerys, maybe even about — 

But no. The queen had come to him that night to remind him exactly why he couldn’t tell Sansa anything. If Daenerys even _suspected_ Jon’s true feelings … 

What she’d done to Varys, to King’s Landing, to all those innocents … would she have done that to Winterfell? To Sansa? The question doesn’t even bear asking. He knows the answer already.

“You’re brooding.”

He blinks at the words, forcing himself to focus on Sansa as she sits by the fire, the flickering light casting a warm, golden aura around her. She is alive and healthy. The proof is there before his eyes. Sansa is alive, the rightful Queen in the North, and Winterfell still stands. Daenerys is dead. 

“You’re thinking about her,” Sansa says, and he almost flinches. “Aren’t you?”

“I … ” He considers playing dumb, but Sansa already knows the truth, and she is too clever to fall for his lies and too ruthless to let him believe them either. He sighs. “She came here, you know. Just once. That night after we burned the dead.”

Sansa’s expression remains impassive, but it’s clear what she thinks he means when she says primly, “I don’t need to hear about it.”

“You do.” He sighs again, shoulders slumping, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “She threatened — everything. Winterfell. Our family. She threatened _you_.” He has to will his jaw to unclench so that he can keep speaking. “Not openly, not until the end, but from the moment she set foot in the North, she never stopped reminding me of her power. Of my oaths. Of what she did to those who would not bend.” He shakes his head. “And those monsters she called children.”

“You rode one of those monsters. I saw you. Everyone in the castle saw you.”

“I remember.”

Something in her face softens imperceptibly, her eyes drifting down to her glass, as if she can see visions of the past in the blood red depths. “You must know how it looked to me. You left for months, and then I learn you’ve given away your kingdom, _our home_ , and when you finally return, you bring _her_ with you. She was so beautiful, Jon. The most beautiful woman in the world, that’s what some said. And she was clearly smitten with you. Perhaps you thought you were being subtle but I knew from the moment she came through the gates precisely what she was to you.”

He opens his mouth to object, and immediately she amends, “Or at least what she thought you were to her.” She pauses, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, and then, with another sip of wine, she continues, “You hardly spoke with me anymore. With any of us, I mean. Arya didn’t know what you were thinking either. You rode beside Daenerys on those dragons, and you stood at her side, and when I dared to question her — ”

“I know.”

Her eyes cut toward him, pale blue and as deadly as the frozen lake that once tried to swallow him whole.

“No,” she says, “you don’t know. It was one thing, to have a cruel queen come into our home _again_ and throw our lives into chaos _again_ , but I could endure that humiliation. I endured Cersei, after all, and she knew how to wield cruelty with subtlety, she knew how to make it really hurt. After her, I could’ve handled Daenerys’s arrogance and idiocy. But _you_ , Jon. I trusted you.”

He swallows, heartsick and guilty. “I just wanted you to live.” It’s all he can say. It’s his only defense. “That was all that mattered. I wanted you to survive.”

Quick as lightning, Sansa rises to her feet, setting her glass on the table with a thump. “What about what I wanted?” Her voice is thick. “You got your wish. I survived. I survived, and _you left me_.” She takes a shuddering breath, and for a moment he thinks he sees tears gleaming in her eyes, but she turns away before he can know for certain. “You left your home. Your family. And why?”

“I let her massacre a city. I — I _helped_ her.”

She whips around, any sign of tears now vanished, as she hisses at him, “You killed her, and it broke you!”

Somehow she’s barely two steps away from him, her harsh exhalations touching his face, her eyes twin stars, burning bright. Her lips pinch closed, her mouth a line of tension, but then she parts them again, and they are redder than ever. His own chest heaves, lungs expanding and contracting much too quickly, as he struggles to find the words — any words — to say. Anything to tell her that can possibly make it better.

“What broke me,” he says finally, “was knowing how far I let her get. Knowing what I allowed her to do, and how close she came to destroying everything that mattered to me. After everything, I think I was relieved that Ned Stark wasn’t my father. I don’t deserve him. I never did.”

Her father’s name seems to jolt Sansa, for she takes another step closer, never letting her gaze waver from him, and she lifts her hand to cradle Jon’s cheek, her fingers cool against his face. He lets his eyes close. He doesn’t want her to see whatever expression he makes when she touches him. 

“I can’t take your guilt from you. I can’t tell you that everything is all right. You made your choices, for better or for worse, and you have to live with them, the same as the rest of us. But Jon — whatever else you did or didn’t do, you did protect me. And Bran and Arya and Winterfell. Daenerys may have come close to destroying us, but she didn’t. You prevented that. I won’t forget it.”

Too soon, her hand falls away. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to do this tonight. I truly didn’t.”

Opening his eyes again, he is struck once more with not just Sansa’s beauty, but with the utter familiarity of her, the way just looking at her feels like coming home. More than the gates of Winterfell, more than the godswood or the Great Hall, certainly more than the Wall and what lies beyond, _she_ is his home.

“We’ll talk again tomorrow, Jon. I am happy you’re here.”

With that, she bids him goodnight and turns to go. Though he sees her hesitate in the doorway for just a moment, she doesn’t glance back.

***

Meria warms up to Jon faster than Sansa expected.

For all she introduced him as family, as someone Meria can trust, she knows that Jon can seem forbidding and fierce, especially as he is now: his hair and beard too long, almost like a wildling, and his eyes sometimes slow to show any sign of joy or warmth. 

He is not like Meria’s other uncles. True, Bran can be strange, still occasionally little more than a stranger wearing her brother’s skin, but around Meria he becomes recognizable again, becomes the boy she used to know: funny and curious and always willing to indulge her incomprehensible babbled conversation. Gendry, meanwhile, shows such unflappable ease with all of the keep’s young children that Sansa wonders if he wants some of his own (and silently wonders what Arya thinks about that). Not only has Gendry utterly charmed the Princess of Winterfell, but he is also a favorite with the other children of the keep: the child of the kennelmaster and the steward’s young twins and even Little Fryda, a scullery maid’s daughter whose recent tendency to throw howling tantrums had resulted in the nickname “the littlest Dothraki screamer.” 

(No doubt the nickname also stems from the rumor Fryda’s father had been a young Dothraki man with whom the maid had fallen in love — or at least fallen into bed — before he’d perished in the Battle of Winterfell … not that Sansa listens to castle gossip.)

Of course, Jon was always good with the boys when they were small, wasn’t he, carrying Bran and Rickon on his shoulders, teasing them and sharing secrets, and he’d been better with Arya than anyone, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that he wins Meria over, no matter how long his beard.

Still, the day Sansa finds them together in the nursery, the sight she comes upon renders her speechless, her chest aching with something that, for one long moment, she cannot name. Then she recognizes it: longing.

Between the duties that take her all over the castle and out onto the grounds, Sansa always makes time to visit Meria in the nursery, sometimes only to find she’s already been put down for a nap or she’s at play with other children; sometimes the wetnurse is there, holding Meria to her breast, which always gives Sansa pang of sorrow. She’d given Meria over to a nursemaid after one stubborn year of refusing to let anyone but herself feed the girl. It had been for the best. Her responsibilities had grown too numerous, especially after Symon’s death, to allow for the frequent breaks that nursing required, and though she for a time she’d had her daughter brought to her when she needed to eat, it had been unfair to Meria. Too often Sansa wasn’t even in the castle: she was outside meeting with builders and other craftsmen about castle repairs, checking on the granaries and the glass gardens, or seeing to the cultivation of nearby farmland that had been destroyed over the long years of war. By the time the nurse found her, Meria would be screaming with hunger, and Sansa would hold her guiltily as she fed her, worrying about the cold wind or the falling snow. The nursemaid made things easier for them both.

Nevertheless, she misses the comfort of Meria suckling at her, knowing her daughter loved and needed no one as she loved and needed her mother. In those moments, she’d been happy. In those moments, she’d felt closer to Catelyn Stark than she had since she was but a girl.

When she steps into the nursery, however, and sees Jon sitting crouched before Meria, her thoughts turn not to her mother but to her father, for Jon has his hands outstretched offering Meria a doll, a doll that looks nothing like the one Ned Stark gave Sansa more than ten years earlier, and yet — 

Her chest aches.

Alessa is the first to react to Sansa’s appearance, dipping into a curtsey. “Your Grace.” This is enough to catch Jon and Meria’s attention, and they both turn to Sansa just as Meria is pulling the doll from Jon’s grasp.

“Mama!” she cries, running clumsily toward Sansa and thrusting the doll up into the air. “Look!”

It is a Northern style of doll, soft and stuffed with wool instead of a fragile, pretty thing of porcelain. Her hair is braided black yarn, her eyes gray beads, and her dress is high-collared and dark. She looks like a Stark.

“What a pretty doll,” Sansa says. “Does she have a name?”

Meria glances back at Jon, who, having risen to his feet, shakes his head. “She’s yours. What d’you want to call her?”

After a moment’s serious consideration, Meria asks, “Can she be Meria?”

Behind her, Jon hides a smile, but Sansa doesn’t bother to smother her laugh. “That might get a bit confusing, love. Why don’t you think about what else you might want to call her? I’m sure you’ll think of something. Or we can think of something together.”

“Hmm. Okay.” Apparently deciding that now is the moment to decide, Meria plops herself down cross-legged on the fur rug, holding the doll close and stroking its hair, her expression almost comical. Her brow furrows as if deep in thought, and for a brief second Sansa thinks she looks just like Jon can when he’s faced with an irritating obstacle. Or at least, just like he used to. Maybe that too has changed.

“She might be a while,” Sansa whispers finally, trying not to notice how Jon’s lips quirk.

“I hope it’s all right that I got it for her.”

“Of course it is.”

Somehow the tenderness in his eyes cuts her as sharply as a blade at her throat, and once more her words vanish until, remembering Alessa’s presence, she coughs. “Alessa, why don’t you take a break? Have a cup of tea. We’ll only be a short while.”

Alessa bobs her head as she dips into a curtsey, and then she disappears through the doorway.

For a few moments, Jon and Sansa just watch Meria as she considers the doll, neither of them speaking. There is something strangely intimate about it, the two of them doing nothing but watching over Sansa’s daughter, who keeps mumbling under breath and petting the doll’s black hair. Soon, however, Sansa realizes that Jon has edged closer to her, so close that she can feel the warmth of his presence, so close that she’s steadied by it. Even after all this time, she feels safer with him at her side.

“I’m sorry.”

He’s not looking at her, his attention still resolutely fixed on Meria, and she makes herself do the same.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. I told you already, Gendry spoils Meria rotten. A new doll hardly signifies.”

“Not that.” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry I left. That I wasn’t here.”

“Oh. We’ve discussed this already.”

“I know, but I never knew how much I missed. She’s so big already. I never got to see her when she was just a little thing. I never got to see you when — ” He cuts himself off, and she turns just in time to see his gaze flickering away from her.

“You never got to see me when … ?”

She thinks he might not answer, but then she hears him mutter, “When you were expecting.”

That almost makes her laugh. “You never got to see me when I was huge and had to waddle everywhere and my feet were so swollen they were practically the size of ships. Each one. An entire ship, I swear. And if you think I can be bossy _now_ — ”

“I’m sure you were beautiful.” Her breath catches, the laughter dying on her tongue, but he still won’t look at her. “I remember when Lady Catelyn … ” He shakes his head, starts over. “Before Rickon was born, your father looked at your mother like she was the most precious thing in all seven kingdoms.” Finally he sends her a sideways glance, something sardonic in his expression, perhaps something even bitter, but she can’t be certain. “I hope your husband looked at you like that.”

“Symon was good to me.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to him.”

“Me too. I miss him still. It’s not fair he won’t get to see his daughter grow up. I lost Father so young, and when Symon was ill, I prayed that Meria wouldn’t — ” Her voice cracks, the words choking her, and then his hand settles against her back, large and warm, and though his touch isn’t heavy, it is firm. “I didn’t want her to have to experience anything like what I experienced,” she tells him.

“She won’t. Sansa, I swear she won’t. She’ll be surrounded by love every moment of her life. She’ll be here, safe at Winterfell. No one will ever hurt her.”

“I hope so.” 

He rubs circles over her back, neither of them admitting that the vow he made is not one any man can keep, and they don’t speak again until Meria draws their attention and, lifting the doll by her braids, says, “Jonquil!”

Sansa stifles a groan, already knowing what’s coming next, but Jon flashes a grin and says, “Oh, aye, good choice. We’ll have to find her a Florian.”

As expected, Meria, pushing unsteadily up to her feet, cries, “Florian and Jonquil!” — though in her babytalk the words run all together, more like _florinjoncle_ than anything else. But Sansa has heard Meria ask enough times that she knows precisely what her daughter is asking for. Indeed, the girl looks up at her pleadingly, and says, “Song, Mama. Sing the song.”

“Not now, baby.”

“ _Pleeeease_ , Mama!” The volume of Meria’s voice climbs, the irrational fury of a two year old beginning to infuse her words. “Sing. _Florinjoncle!_ Sing the song! ”

Sansa’s mouth thins, but when she glances over at Jon, he simply raises an eyebrow at her. “Sing the song,” he says. “That’s an order from your princess. I think you’ve got no other choice.”

“Now don’t you encourage her,” Sansa says, unable to hide her amusement even as her cheeks grow warmer. It’s odd to have him tease her. Odd and … nice. 

“Oh, fine. I’ll sing. But this is your last chance to escape, Jon. Who knows how many times she’ll want me to sing it? She loves this song.”

“I seem to remember that you love this song too. Or you did, once. Go on.”

Sansa thinks she ought to send him away anyway, for she can’t recall the last time she sang in front of anyone but her daughter and Symon, and this, like the way they watched Meria, feels intimate in a way that gives her goosflesh, but she knows she’s being silly. She makes herself take a seat on the chair beside the crib, drawing Meria up on to her lap, along with the doll now called Jonquil. Sansa begins to sing, softly at first, but her voice grows in strength as she continues.

 _“You are a no knight,” fair Jonquil cried,_  
_By the waters o’ Maidenpool._  
_“I know you well, you’re Florian,_  
_You’re Florian the Fool.”_

 _“O sweetest lady,” said the fool,_  
_Hidden ‘mongst lilies and foxglove._  
_“All men are fools, all men are knights,_  
_For a good woman’s love.”_

Jon catches her eye, not smiling, but his gaze is soft and familiar and dangerously warm, and her heart thunders in her chest as she sings on.

*

When Alessa returns to the nursery and Jon offers to escort Sansa to her next errand, she finds herself unable to deny him, even when she knows she should. They are silent as they descend the flights of stairs and traverse the corridors, but as they round the final corner to the kitchens, Sansa pauses, her hand catching his wrist.

His eyes go wide and flick down to where she’s touching him. She quickly lets him go.

“How long will you stay?”

“What?”

“At Winterfell. How long do you intend to stay?”

“Oh — ” He blinks, still frowning with confusion, and then her meaning seems to dawn. His mouth tightens, the furrows in his brows growing deeper. “Would you have me gone?”

“No. No, not at all. But it seems Meria has grown fond of you, and I can’t allow her to get hurt. She’s already lost her father, and with Arya and Gendry always coming and going, it can be confusing for her. I just don’t want her to get used to the idea that you’ll always be here.”

“I see.”

“You do understand, don’t you?”

He nods, jaw still clenched.

“I’m not sending you away,” she adds, trying to soothe him. “Quite the opposite. I just — ”

“You don’t trust me.”

She inhales sharply, wanting to deny his words, and yet … she can’t. He has been at Winterfell little more than a week. He’d been gone three years. What guarantee does she have that he won’t decide to disappear again, leaving her once more, leaving Winterfell and Bran and Arya, leaving _Meria_?

Meria had been too young to truly understand when Symon died, but she is old enough now to feel heartbreak. And if in three months, six months, a year or two, Jon decides he’d rather live amongst the wildlings? If he decides he’d rather go back to hiding in shame and sorrow, mourning a woman he swears he never loved? What then?

“I want to trust you,” Sansa says finally. “I used to trust you, perhaps beyond reason. But it’s been a long time since you’ve given me reason to trust you. Surely you must know that.”

“Aye. I know that.”

Save for the flash in his eyes, which he quickly averts, she wouldn’t know he was upset. His tone is placid, resigned even, and despite the tension in his body, there’s no flush of irritation, no furious glare. She has been on the receiving end of his anger enough times to know what it looks like. It does not look like this.

This is something else.

“Jon … ”

“No, you’re right. You are. I’ve given you little enough reason to trust me.” He exhales heavily, something dark and fathomless in his expression, and then — she almost gasps — he reaches out to take hold of her bare hand. He tightens his grip, his skin rough and warm against hers. “I will, though. I promise I will.”

He releases her just as abruptly as he touched her, and leaves her to her business with the cook. For the rest of the afternoon, she can still feel the grasp of his hand, a memory, a ghost, she cannot forget.

***

Jon spars in the training yard with anyone who wishes to fight him, the man who’d once been the bastard King in the North, the disgraced Targaryen who’d killed the queen, his aunt, his lover. There’d been little love for Daenerys in the North, but that’s stopped none of them from calling him a queenslayer, a kinslayer. They eye him with disdain and think to test their swords against his. They always lose. He is an oathbreaker, a man without honor, it is true. But he is still a better swordsman than them all.

(Bran tells him the Northerners do not hate Jon for all he’s done, all he is. Bran reminds him that when Jon had been imprisoned in King’s Landing, Sansa had rallied the Northern forces in his name, in order to fight for him; that Sansa had intended to crown him again, once he was free, and they had all joined her anyway. But Jon knows that says more about Northern loyalty to Sansa than anything about what they think of him.)

One chilly afternoon the clouds are low in the sky, threatening snow or freezing rain, though neither has yet fallen. The training yard is mostly empty, perhaps because of the weather, or perhaps because much of the castle is preparing for an upcoming visit from Robin Arryn, Lord of the Vale, come to discuss a new trade agreement with the North. “Arya and Gendry are traveling with him,” Sansa had confided after she received the raven informing them of the visit. “I hope Arya doesn’t kill him.”

Whatever the reason for the yard’s emptiness, Jon finds himself alone amidst the straw dummies and archery targets — alone save for Brienne of Tarth.

 _Ser_ Brienne of Tarth, apparently.

Jon has never known quite what to make of Brienne and her strange mix of unyielding strength and bashful delicacy, but he has been grateful to her from the moment she brought Sansa to him at Castle Black. They’ve had little reason to speak over the years, however, and when he sees her now, it is difficult not to think of how Tormund pined for her, and then it is difficult not to think of Tormund. He misses his friend. He will have to ask him to visit Winterfell in the future, perhaps with his son, when the boy is grown big enough. What will he do if he sees Brienne again?

Of course, Brienne had never cared for Tormund, and, from the look on her face as she spots Jon in the yard, it is apparent that she is not especially fond of Jon either. Once, he thinks, they’d been silent but respectful allies, united in their dedication to one cause: keeping Sansa safe. Now, however ... 

“Ser Brienne,” Jon greets, and all she does is arch an eyebrow at him. He lifts Longclaw in invitation. “We’ve never sparred before.”

“I wouldn’t have agreed to fight the King in the North.”

“I’m not the King in the North now.”

She smiles, but it’s more like a grimace, and she unsheathes her sword. “No,” she agrees. “You’re not.”

In terms of strength, she has a distinct advantage: she’s bigger, taller, hits harder. She wields her broadsword, a Valryian steel blade that had once been half of Ice, in an easy two-handed grip, and when their blades meet for the first time, testing each other, Jon feels the impact of her hit all through his arms, up to his shoulders. It does not matter that she’s a woman: in a battle of brute strength, she will win, but Jon rarely relies on brute strength alone.

The trouble is, she’s not slow either. As they continue circling each other, occasionally springing forward and back with a slash or a strike, Jon finds that Brienne’s footwork is quick, careful but instinctive, and she twirls and dodges with little more than a huff of breath.

As they fall into the rhythm of the fight, Jon finds himself saying, “You’re good.”

“Disappointed?”

“No. Someone as good as you _should_ be guarding Sansa.”

That makes her falter — almost. With a grunt, she parries his blow, but she puts more force into it than she should’ve needed.

“It is an honor to serve the queen.” She’s breathing more heavily, patches of red appearing on her cheeks. “I am loyal to her.” She backs him up a step or two, and he feels sweat trickle down his temple as he fights her off, finally whirling out of reach. “I will protect her from those who try to hurt her.”

“As you should.”

She lunges again, moving into his space, her sword gleaming as she strikes at him, a blow he barely holds off. The clash of steel echoes in his ears. “ _All_ of those who try to hurt her.”

Her blue eyes shine like her sword, sharp, deadly. Her meaning could not be more apparent. For a brief moment, Jon considers his options: he could keep fighting her, he has not yet thrown his all into it, and in the end he might win, though it was far from certain. None of that matters though. It’s not the point.

He drops his sword to the dirt.

“The fight isn’t done!”

“It is.”

“You yield?”

He ignores her growl, and the disgusted curl of her lip. “I yield.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re both loyal to Sansa.”

“Loyal? You left Queen Sansa in control of the North and then pledged yourself to another and made that woman, that tyrant, your queen. And then you killed her. I don’t think you know what loyalty means.”

“I was only trying to protect Sansa. Whatever the cost.”

It takes a moment, but comprehension dawns on Brienne’s face, and for the first time since he yielded, she lowers her sword. “The dragon queen … ”

“Daenerys would’ve killed Sansa.”

“Even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean you won’t still hurt her.”

It’s the same thought that’s plagued him since his return. He’d allied with Daenerys to protect Sansa, he’d killed Daenerys to protect her, he’d fled as far north as he could get to protect her — and he’d hurt her anyway.

“I know.” 

“Then you know I am sworn to protect Queen Sansa and the princess,” Brienne reminds him. “I would die to protect them.” Her voice is firm and proud, and he cannot help but be thankful once more than this woman is in Sansa’s life. 

“I want you to protect them, even from me. I can’t — I _can’t_ fuck things up again.”

“What are you saying?”

He rubs a tired hand over his face, pushing a sweaty hand through his hair, wishing he didn’t have to explain anything, not _knowing_ how to explain anything. He’s grown used to the silence of the true north, with only Ghost, who understands him even when he doesn’t understand himself.

Finally, he says, “I’m saying that I trust you to do what it takes to keep them safe. You’d tell Sansa to send me away if you thought you had to. To keep her daughter from me. You’d kill me, if it came to that.”

Brienne pauses, not a hesitation, exactly, but a moment of thought before she says, “I would.” Her expression is solemn. “Will it come to that?”

“I hope not.” Sheathing Longclaw, he fixes her with one last look. “I hope that in time you believe that I won’t hurt Sansa. Then maybe I can finally believe it myself.”

*

The party from the Vale arrives within the fortnight, two lines of men on horseback who ride alongside a coach emblazoned flying the falcon banners of House Arryn, brilliant blue and white. Jon still associates those banners with salvation. He’s never forgotten how, when he’d thought all was lost, the Knights of the Vale had ridden over the rise and turned the tide of the battle. He hadn’t known then the price Sansa would have to pay for their help, the way Petyr Baelish would weasel his way into her life once more. All he’d known was that she’d saved him, saved them all.

A horse breaks free from the line, a gray gelding that gallops past the Winterfell guards and barely comes to a halt before its rider leaps from her mount. “Jon,” Arya cries, a grin splitting her face. “I didn’t know you were here.” She races over to hug him tightly for a moment before swatting him on his arm. “About time.”

She’s collected a few new scars since he last saw her, nothing especially worrisome. More than that, she’s grown older, her lingering boyishness transformed into an odd kind of beauty, almost a handsomeness, that suits her. She looks _happy_.

When they turn their attention back to the group from the Vale, Jon sees a young man climbing out of the carriage: tall and pale, with a swoop of straight dark hair over his face, and an expression as if he’s smelled something foul. But when Sansa, dressed in a fine gown of midnight blue, steps forward to greet him, Lord Arryn’s haughtiness vanishes and he bursts into a genuine smile.

“Your Grace,” he greets, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to it.

“My lord.” There’s laughter in her voice. “You’re even taller than the last time I saw you.”

“It’s good to be back in the North, Your Grace.”

“Come now, we have known each other a long time, we needn’t stand on formalities. Call me Sansa, or at least you may call me cousin.”

“Cousin Sansa, then. It’s good to see you.”

He kisses her hand once more and then Sansa takes him by the arm, guiding him into the castle as the servants and soldiers remain behind, some moving to unpack the coach carrying his things, while others untie the horses and see them safely to the stables.

Jon glances at Arya, who, showing little interest in the procession, is using a dagger to dig the dirt out from beneath her fingernails. “Lord Arryn isn’t exactly how I remember him from Riverrun,” Jon comments mildly, but she just shrugs.

“Still a pain in my arse.”

“Where’s Gendry?”

 _That_ gets her attention, making her look up at him and roll her eyes. “He sailed to Storm’s End instead of coming north. Said he needed to check on his people, even though he knows they’ve been managing just fine without him. He’ll come here once he’s stopped being stupid.”

“Oh. Everything all right?”

“It’s fine. He’s an idiot. He asked me to marry him again.”

_Again?_

“And you … said no.”

“Of course I said no.”

He tries to process this, not daring to show the surprise on his face. It may have been years since he’s seen Arya, but he knows better to press further, not when she’s like this. Whatever is going on between her and Gendry, she will explain it to him when she’s ready.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Arya says, “I blame the Arryn brat.”

“Robin Arryn?”

“Gendry got stupid ideas from him, I just know it.”

“About marriage? Lord Arryn is little more than a boy. I doubt he’s given much to thinking about marriage.”

Arya arches her eyebrow at him, and a strange and sudden fear goes swooping through his stomach. “Don’t be so sure,” she says, bumping her shoulder against him as she begins approaching the keep, her boots dragging in the dirt. She glances back, giving him a long, piercing look. “Why do you think he’s come to see Sansa?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! And please comment to let me know if you enjoyed this chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this chapter was getting long (like ~13k words) so I've split it into two. I'm still revising the second half but it should go up VERY soon.
> 
> It's been a while so you may want to revisit the previous chapter to remember the premise of this post-8.05 AU but the essentials are: Jon still killed Dany but his exile was self-imposed and he's just returned to Winterfell, Sansa is QITN and married the younger brother of the prince of Dorne and had a baby with him, but she was recently widowed and now Robin Arryn is visiting Winterfell possibly with the intention of courting her.

Even from across the hall, Jon can hear the young Lord Arryn laughing at whatever Sansa has just said, grinning broadly over their plates of roasted lamb and herbed potatoes, their goblets filled high with the fine Arbor gold that the Lord of the Vale brought with him as a gift for his cousin. Jon takes another swig of bitter ale.

The boy has been here four days. Four days of riding with Sansa through the wolfswood, visiting the Sept with her, spending hours locked in her office with her and Lord Royce, supposedly discussing trade agreements. In the evenings, she still opens her solar to her family, but when he arrived that first night, he found the room already full: Arya was there, which he’d expected, even hoped, but so was Robin Arryn, holding Meria stiffly on his lap as she tugged at his hair. Jonquil, the little black-haired doll he thought she loved, had been left discarded on the floor at Sansa’s feet.

After that he begins to spend the better part of his time with Arya, always happy for her company, even if all they do is walk in to the wintertown to see that the smallfolk are well or sit with Bran in the godswood, sharpening their swords as their brother communes with history. He’s even promised to spar with her with live steel one of these days, though only after Brienne assured him that there was no danger in it, almost smirking when she at last understood he had misgivings about raising a sword to his little sister, even in practice. The whisper of _kinslayer_ still burns in his ears. “She’s in no danger from _you_ ,” the knight had said, “though I can make no promises for your safety.” 

Jon only wishes Sansa could join them, Sansa and Meria both, in the godswood and in town, or cheering them on in the training yard. It’s selfish is what it is, that Lord Arryn keeps Sansa from the rest of her family, now that they are all together again for the first time in years.

Yet there he sits beside her, talking too loud, guffawing at his own jokes — and Sansa, ever courteous, allows it.

“It’s not right.”

“Whas nah righ’?” Arya asks around her mouthful of potato. 

Jon nods toward the High Table. Tonight, he and Arya have both taken seats at the back of the hall, where they don’t have to pretend to make polite conversation with the visitors from the Vale, but unlike Jon, Arya seems to have no interest in whatever Sansa and her guest are discussing. She has not been watching the boy slowly encroach on Sansa’s space, leaning into her more and more as the evening progresses. She has not been hearing his laughter or seeing Sansa’s unreadable smiles.

“Sansa’s not been widowed a year yet. He can’t really mean to marry her.”

“ _Seven hells_. Why is marriage all anyone wants to talk about anymore? You’re all obsessed.”

Despite himself, his eyes remain fixed on Sansa as she takes a deep drink from her goblet, exposing the long, pale line of her throat. 

This is another thing that has changed in the years that Jon was gone: though she is still dressed in black, still in mourning, the severe lines of her gowns have softened, the fabric no longer bounding her in so tightly it was a wonder she could breathe. Sometimes, like tonight, she even wears a dress with a neckline that reveals the very top of her collarbone, a tantalizingly chaste flash of skin that still somehow feels forbidden to him.

When he at last turns back at Arya, she’s giving him a strange look. “It’s not fair to her, that’s all,” he explains hastily. “Asking her to marry again.”

“What, you imagined she’d live out the rest of her life a widow? She doesn’t want to be alone forever. She wants more babies, she wants someone to hold her in bed. She wants what Mother and Father had.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s _Sansa_.”

Arya says it like it’s obvious, and, in a way, it is. Whatever else may have happened to her, however else she may have changed, Sansa is still, deep down, the girl who by the time she was nine had begged to hear every tale of tragic romance that Old Nan knew; the girl who plucked her harp and sang about Florian and Jonquil, about Naerys and Aemon, about Jenny of Oldstones and Prince Duncan; the girl who once gave Jon, awkward and lanky and on the cusp of adolescence, advice on how to talk to pretty girls, perhaps never realizing that she was by far the prettiest girl he ever spoke with. Sansa always wanted to be loved and to love. Perhaps for a time she’d had her wish, with Symon, before the world in its cruelty stole him from her.

It makes sense that she would want to marry again, eventually. But — 

“She can’t really want to marry _him_ , can she?”

Under the table, Arya kicks him in the shin. “How should I know? Ask her yourself if you’re so concerned.” A moment later, when his gaze drifts back to the High Table, Arya kicks him again, even harder this time, and she does nothing more than shrug when he looks at her.

In truth, no matter how much Jon might try to glare at his little sister, her arched eyebrow and the mischievous curve of her mouth are so warm, so familiar, that they make it difficult to do anything but smile. Gods, how he’s missed her. He was a fool to stay away for so long.

“I’m just worried about Sansa,” he says finally. “Aren’t you?”

“Sansa’s been taking care of herself for a long time. I’ll always look out for her, but she knows her own mind. I’m sure she can hold her own against Robin Arryn of all people.” She gestures at a servant, who steps forward to top up their tankards of ale. Arya pushes Jon’s tankard toward him, heedless of the ale sloshing over the side, and says, “Now shut up and have another drink, or I’ll have to find Podrick instead. And the gods _know_ he can’t hold his ale. Last time we drank together, he was sick all over his boots. You should’ve seen Brienne’s face.”

Taking pity on the squire, Jon lifts the drink to his lips and tells himself to keep his eyes off of the High Table and his mind off of whatever conversation may be happening between Sansa and her cousin. He tells himself it’s better not to think about it. It’s not his place to think about it. It’s not his place to care. Who Sansa entertains, who she marries — it’s nothing to him.

If he keeps telling himself that, maybe in time he will believe it.

*

Two days later, Jon leaves the training yard with a thin slice on his neck where Arya touched her Needle to his skin for no other reason than to prove that she could. Those watching the match are delighted with the outcome: a small crowd of onlookers hoot and holler as Arya crows her victory and Jon dabs the blood from his neck with his sleeve; meanwhile, Podrick tries and fails to hide his grin behind his hand, and even Brienne’s eyes are dancing with merriment when they meet Jon’s. There is no anger in the crowd, no suspicion, no derision. With Arya here, Jon no longer feels like an interloper. For the first time in a long time, he almost feels like a Stark.

After gulping at her waterskin, Arya offers it to Jon. Her face is gleaming with sweat, but she’s not winded at all. If anything, the fight seems to have energized her. “You’re good,” she comments, as if she’s never seen him train before. “Fast.”

“Aye, but you’re faster.”

Somehow her smile grows even bigger, even brighter. “I am.”

He leaves her to continue sparring with Brienne, intending to head back to his room to clean his cut properly and change into a fresh shirt, but when his path takes him past the nursery, his feet slow to a stop. The door is ajar, and low, very low, he can hear humming. He doesn’t recognize the tune, sweet and melancholy all at once, but the voice is unmistakable. Even as quiet as that, he knows its sound.

Through the crack in the door, he sees Sansa sitting beside Meria’s crib, her hand closed around one of the wooden rails. Despite her humming, she does not seem happy. Her brow is wrinkled, mouth turned down in an expression he cannot read but that sends a pang through his heart. Even now, all these years later, all he wants is to protect her from anything that troubles her, anything that seeks to harm her.

Before he can stop himself, before he can remind himself that _it’s not his place_ , he pushes the door open wider and hears himself asking, “Is everything all right?”

He keeps his voice low in case Meria is sleeping, and indeed when Sansa’s wide blue eyes flash up to meet his own, she brings a finger to her lips. He wonders if he ought to leave — no, he _knows_ he ought to leave — but instead he watches her move toward him, her gaze on him but her face giving nothing away, as she crowds him into the hallway and pulls the door shut behind her.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

“I — ” His stomach plummets, his thoughts racing faster than he can follow them. Is he no longer welcome to see Meria? Does she no longer want him to be near her daughter, near her family? Is he no longer her family? “I thought I heard you singing.”

“Singing?”

“I was just passing by.”

She seems to be considering this, her brow furrowed, her lips turned down, when her eyes flicker to his neck. “You’re hurt,” she says. She lifts her hand as if to touch him before she seems to realize what she’s doing and she lets her arm drop back to her side. “What happened?” 

“Arya. We were sparring.”

“What state did you leave her in?”

“Without a scratch.”

“Typical.” The small smile that rises to Sansa’s lips and the soft gleam in her eyes reassure him that she hasn’t decided she hates him entirely, at least. Unless she is smiling at the thought of Arya knocking him on his arse. She lifts her hand toward his neck again. “May I?”

Her hands had been so soft, that day he held them tight and swore he would give her a reason to trust him again. Soft and cool, the sensation of her slender fingers against his palm enough to haunt his dreams. He’s thought of them far too often in the time since.

He nods.

To peer at the cut, she has to lean in, close enough that her breath stirs the curls that have escaped his leather tie, and her fingers graze the rough flesh beneath his jaw. He is embarrassed, suddenly, by his unkempt beard and overgrown hair. Symon, he recalls, had been well-groomed, clean-shaven with a face that bore no scars. He’d been just the sort of man Sansa ought to have married. It aches, thinking of her in her husband’s arms, happy and in love, but the ache only grows worse at the thought of her grief. All he’s ever wished for was her happiness. It’s still all he wants.

“I daresay you’ll be just fine,” she confirms, her voice at his ear sending a shiver down his spine. “I doubt it’ll leave a mark.”

Her fingertips, chilly against his burning skin, at last pull away. Only then does he realize how hard his heart is beating.

He tries to find something to say, something to think about that is not simply the proximity of her body, the scent of her hair. “It’s — ” He clears his throat. “It’s just a scratch. Arya was trying to prove a point of some kind. As if I didn’t already know she’s better with a sword than me.”

“It’s not you she’s trying to prove a point to.”

“No?”

“It’s everyone who was watching. They all still talk about you, you know.”

_Traitor. Targaryen. Queenslayer. Kinslayer._

But then she says, “Jon Snow. The best swordsman in the North. You’re quite the legend. Even the ones who’ve never seen you fight have heard all about your feats on the battlefield. Every child in this keep has been told some half-true tale of your heroism during the Battle of the Bastards. Some of the Free Folk who visit even bring absurd songs about it, though I suspect you might have Tormund to blame for that.”

Heat rises to his cheeks as he thinks about all the men so eager to spar with him, and the way they whispered to each other as they waited their turn. He was sure they despised him. They saw the taint in him, the dragon’s blood, and would never forgive the mistakes he’d made. Nor should they. That’s what he’s told himself.

“Someone,” Sansa continues nonchalantly, “even started a rumor that you’re the one who killed the Night King. Naturally Arya’s a bit jealous.”

He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “But _she_ killed the Night King.”

“Most people know the truth, and I do correct anyone who says otherwise. But after … after King’s Landing, you were known as a killer of monsters. Dragons, dragon queens, and the dead alike.”

After King’s Landing, he was known as a turncloak and a fool and a murderer. Wasn’t he?

“It’s easier for them to make a hero of you this way,” Sansa says. “I suppose it’s better than the alternative.”

Not knowing what to make of any of this, he says, “Arya’s the hero. She’s the one who saved us. And she’s better than me with a sword too.”

“She’s more graceful, but you’re — you _are_ very good. I think your shirt may be ruined though.”

He glances at his bloodied sleeve, stained brownish red where he used it to wipe his wound. The collar’s probably stained too. The shirt is one of the ones that had belonged to Sansa’s husband, and he knows without looking that it is held together with Sansa’s perfect stitches, those neat lines so full of care.

“Sorry. About the shirt.”

Another ghost of a smile. “I’ll make you a new one.”

“Thank you, Sansa.”

He makes a move to leave but she halts him with a hand at his elbow. His pulse hammers harder.

Sansa keeps her head ducked down so that he can’t see her eyes, but there’s something she wants to say, something on the tip of her tongue. He can see it in her furrowed brow and the way she licks her lips. When she finally speaks, however, all she says is, “I haven’t seen much of you lately. You’re always with Arya.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Arya. Besides, you’ve been busy with the Vale … and Lord Arryn. I didn’t want to intrude.”

Silent for a moment, Sansa bites her lip, which grows pinker beneath the pressure. He tries not to notice. “Have you no interest in our trade negotiations? You were a king once. You engaged in such negotiations yourself.”

“Aye, and I was never any good at it. You know that. You said it yourself. All I was ever good for was a sword in my hand.”

That makes her look at him, her eyes flashing. “That’s _not_ what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“I know.” He sighs. “I’m sorry. But what would you have me say? I was a failure as a king, and you have exceeded me in every way. I am not so proud that I would pretend otherwise, Your Grace.”

The formality of the title hardens something between them, makes her lift her chin and narrow her eyes, but maybe that’s what is necessary. He has been thinking of her too much as _Sansa_ and not enough as the queen, with power and responsibility he himself never understood how to wield. All such power has brought him is daggers in the dark and the selfish affections of a selfish woman.

“I ought to go,” he says, biting down on his guilt once more. “Arya’s waiting for me.”

“Of course.”

He doesn’t look back as he walks away. He is a coward.

***

For a highborn girl, marriage will always be a duty before anything else. Love might come, if you are lucky, but just as likely a woman ends up like Cersei Lannister, bartered for power to a man she despised, or Lysa Arryn, given away to a man old enough to be her father. 

Just as likely a woman ends up married to a monster, or an enemy, or a sensible political ally who dies too young. Sansa’s been married to all three.

But Symon taught her that marriage can be sweet, that the things that happen between husbands and wives can be joyous, pleasurable even. Symon gave her hope she’d not felt in a long time. Symon gave her Meria.

She _will_ marry again, and she’ll have more children, too. A whole castle full of children, if she can manage it.

She wants her daughter to have a pack of her own, brothers and sisters to cherish and spoil and tease. Besides, there is the matter of succession. Sansa has no qualms about leaving her crown to a girl, but for the moment, Meria is heir to two kingdoms: the North _and_ Dorne. Symon’s older brother has yet to marry or father children, and though there is time enough for that still, Sansa is well aware that there is a chance that one day Meria may be asked to rule her father’s homeland. 

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, and Sansa must ensure her line lives on, that Northern independence lives on, so she needs more children, more heirs. She wants them.

So, all things considered, Royce’s suggestion is reasonable. She could marry her cousin Robin, unite the North and the Vale, produce a few more daughters and sons, and secure a long and peaceful rule. She wouldn’t even have to give up her power, not really, for she knows Robin would have no qualms relying on her to lead. No doubt he’d prefer it.

“Your Grace,” says Lord Royce, ever-respectful. Part of her still regrets that he is tied to the Vale and not to the North; he’d once been her closest advisor. “You must know that Lord Arryn is no longer the boy he once was. His health is much improved, and his temperament, I’m sure you’ve noticed, has … altered in recent years.”

Yes, she’s noticed. There’s still a trace of that pale, bratty boy within the man Robin has become — she can see it in his face when a servant takes too long to fetch his drink or someone convenes a meeting too early in the morning — but, separated from his mother’s worst vices and the pernicious influence of Petyr Baelish, he has grown stronger in both body and will, becoming a young man better suited to serve his people. He will never be a warrior lord, riding into battle with his men, but he is rather like their uncle Edmure: a bit soft-headed, perhaps, but he has learned to be generous and dutiful and mindful of the needs of those who rely on him. He may even make a good husband one day.

To Sansa, however, he still seems terribly young, of an age with Bran and, indeed, more like a little brother than anything else. She remembers sitting at his bedside, singing him to sleep after Lysa died. She remembers scolding him when he stomped on her snowcastle and bribing him with sweets when he wouldn’t behave.

“Think on it,” Lord Royce says, his voice gentle. “Will you do that, at least?”

Whatever her feelings, whatever her reservations, Sansa is sensible, and she cannot pretend not to see the sense in this arrangement. If it is what she must do, then she will do it. She will do her duty. At least she knows she has nothing to fear from Robin.

“I’ll think on it,” she says.

Even as she utters the promise, she knows it will not be easy to keep. These days, every time her mind drifts to marriage, every time she thinks on the family she wishes to build, there is already a man there, a man she’s tried so hard to banish from her heart.

A good man — imperfect, yes, but _good_. A man who is brave and gentle and strong, just as her father promised. A man more handsome than anyone she’s ever seen, even with his untamed hair and his overgrown beard.

A man who was once her brother.

She can never have Jon. He isn’t her brother, no, but if he ever loved her, it was out of duty, out of honor. It was because they were the only ones left. Now that Arya is here, he has no time for her. Indeed, ever since Arya’s arrival with Robin and Lord Royce, Jon has grown distant, no longer sitting with her for meals, no longer visiting her and Meria in the evening. That moment outside the nursery when she’d allowed herself to lean close, to touch his skin — that was the first time in days that they’ve even spoken more than a passing word.

When Arya leaves, as she will, as she always does, it seems likely that Jon will go with her. Sansa curses herself for ever expecting anything else. Foolish girl. She’s meant to be a queen now. She cannot afford to be so damn _stupid_ , letting her soft heart guide her instead of thought and reason. She knows Jon doesn’t love her. She’s known it for a long time. She’ll only get hurt pretending otherwise.

And Meria … 

She told him to be careful with Meria. She begged him not to confuse her daughter. If he plans to leave, then he’d best start preparing her for it now.

She’ll tell him so, the next time she sees him. She won’t get distracted by the open collar of his shirt or the sheen of his sweat or the temptation to take advantage of an obviously superficial wound so that she might graze her fingers along his throat, be nearer to his warmth, the scent of leather that clings to him.

“Your Grace?” Lord Royce asks, pulling her from her thoughts. His wrinkled brow belies his concern. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. Thank you, Lord Royce. If that’s all … ”

He nods, registering her dismissal, but in the doorway of her solar he hesitates. “I hope you know, Your Grace, that I only wish to see you safe and secure. I wish it for Lord Arryn as well. I know this may not have been precisely how you imagined your future, but for both of your sakes, as well as the loyalty and friendship I owe both of your fathers, I do hope you’ll consider it.”

“I know that. Truly, I do, and I thank you for all you’ve done for me over the years.”

His smile is fond — _paternal_ , she cannot help but think, though there’s something traitorous in the thought that makes her uneasy. Still, part of her wants to rise and hug him; but she is a queen, and he is not her father, so instead she simply bows her head in acknowledgment. 

Once the door closes behind him, Sansa lets her head fall into her hands. _Seven save me_ , she thinks. _Am I really going to marry Robin?_

*** 

Bran’s rooms are even sparser than Jon’s; though there’s a basin for washing and a number of candles, there’s no pitcher of water or wine at the ready, no papers and half-written scrolls scattered across the table, no books even. When all of human history lives in your head, perhaps you don’t need books anymore. Jon notices that there are no chairs, either, save the wheeled one in which Bran sits, and it occurs to him that perhaps nobody visits him here. Whether that is their choice or his, he doesn’t know. He can’t imagine Sansa neglecting Bran, but with a child and, not long ago, a husband, it’s possible. Jon knows he has never come to this room before.

It’s not that he’s been avoiding Bran, but he doesn’t know how to talk to him anymore, this man who isn’t quite human, so very different from the little boy he’d known. He loves Bran, of course he does. He’s grateful that Bran’s alive, and he thanks the gods that he’s been able to find some kind of peace here at Winterfell, finally unburdened of the weight of the world, the fate of humanity, and the mark of the Night King.

Nevertheless, Jon doesn’t know what to say to him or why he’s been summoned here, and he paces the length of the room as he waits for Bran to speak first. Finally, with his gaze fixed on the hearth and his voice distant, Bran says, “I’m thinking of leaving.”

It takes Jon a long moment to absorb the words. “Leave?” he finally manages. “To go where? Does Sansa know?”

Bran shakes his head. “I haven’t told anyone yet. That’s why I asked you to come speak with me.”

“You can’t — please don’t ask me to tell Sansa.”

His panic at the prospect must be obvious, because Bran lifts his hands, palms up, as if to calm a startled horse. “No, I’ll tell her. I would, however, like like your advice.”

Jon manages not to laugh. “ _My_ advice?” Whatever he imagined Bran wished to say, it was not this. “Surely you’d be better off asking somebody else. Anybody else. Besides, don’t you already know everything there is to know?”

“That’s not how it works, especially not now. Since you killed Drogon, magic has been fading from the world. My magic too. I see less than I used to. I suppose that’s how it ought to be.” Bran’s attention returns to the crackling fire. “Magic is not inherently evil any more than it is good, but it’s unpredictable and hard to control. Magic can bring miracles and it can bring monsters. You are with us because of magic. So were the White Walkers.”

“Or maybe I’m just a monster too.”

“No. No more than any other man. No more than me.”

His voice is so grim, so serious, that Jon marches over to Bran and squeezes his shoulder gently. “You’re not a monster,” he tells him firmly, for whatever else may have happened, however he may have changed, in his heart Bran is still his little brother.

“Then neither are you. Sometimes things happen that are beyond our control. Sometimes we make mistakes.”

“You’re right. But my mistakes aren’t like yours.” Jon drops his hand and turns away. “All I’ve done is make mistakes. Even before Daenerys. I failed you, all of you. You were beyond the Wall the whole time, and I never found you. I should’ve — ”

“You couldn’t have known. I didn’t want you to know.”

“What about Sansa?” He looks back at his brother and something in Bran’s eyes makes him feel bare, exposed, and yet he keeps talking, the words spilling out of him despite himself. Maybe this is what he feared all along: that if he spoke with Bran, Bran would see all of his worst, most shameful moments. Maybe he was terrified that Bran knows all the darkest secrets of his heart.

“She was a prisoner in this castle for _months_ , and I did nothing.” 

“You feel guilty about Rickon, too,” says Bran tonelessly.

“Of course I do,” Jon snaps, his pulse thundering in his ears, his feet rooted to the ground. “I might have been able to save him, if I’d just tried. I could’ve gotten to him before the Umbers. I could’ve done it, but after— after Lord Stark died, and Robb, I didn’t look for any of you.”

“You had your own path you had to walk, Jon.”

“Yes, a path that led me straight to a tyrant. Once we were finally all home at last, I brought _her_ here.”

“You can’t punish yourself for your choices forever. If you hadn’t stayed at the Wall, we wouldn’t have known the threat we faced. If you hadn’t brought Daenerys north, we may have lost the war against the dead.”

“Do you know that? Can you see all that?”

“That’s not how it works. Rarely is there a single decision that changes the whole shape of fate. It’s a series of choices and chances, and even then — some things cannot be avoided at all. Once Daenerys’s dragons were grown, I don’t know if it was even possible to stop her before she committed atrocities.”

“If I’d killed her sooner, if I’d found a way — ”

“She’d already destroyed lives in Essos. Yet Tyrion still supported her. He brought her to Westeros. Varys found her allies. You were not the only one who might have stood between her and King’s Landing.”

“Varys _tried_ — ”

“He burned for it. You would’ve too, and so would’ve Winterfell. So would’ve Sansa.”

Jon inhales sharply, the truth of Bran’s words turning his blood to ice. A million lives for Sansa’s — and Bran’s and Arya’s, and everyone at Winterfell, everyone in the North. He’s always known it was so, but to hear it put so plainly nearly takes the feet out from under him. Would he have done anything differently if those were the only choices? 

He hates himself for thinking it. He hates himself for knowing the answer.

 _What is honor compared to a woman’s love?_ Maester Aemon had asked him once.

“I — ” Voice shaking, he lowers himself to sit on the edge of Bran’s bed, his hand clenching at the furs. “This isn’t what you wanted to talk to me about.”

Bran’s mouth quirks at that, the shadow of a smile. “It is, actually.”

Jon’s furrowed brow must convey his confusion, because Bran continues, “I need to leave because there is someone I need to speak with. Someone I wronged.”

“Who?”

“Meera. Meera Reed. She’s at Greywater Watch now. I’ve known for a long time what I have to do, but … ” All at once he looks is as young as he is, and more vulnerable than Jon’s ever seen him. “I’m afraid. That’s why I want your advice. You’re not the only one who made mistakes and hurt people in your quest to do what was right, yet you’ve returned. You’ve tried to mend things. I know facing Sansa takes a lot of bravery.”

“I’m a coward, Bran.”

“No, you’re scared,” Bran says. “There’s a difference.”

Jon scrubs a hand over his face, trying to hold back the strange, pained laughter that keeps almost bubbling up within him. In another life, this wouldn’t be so fucked. His little brother seeking advice on how to talk to a girl — it’s practically a rite of passage. Except the advice Bran needs is on how to apologize to a girl he’s hurt in the course of trying to save the whole bloody continent, and he wants to know how Jon managed to apologize to Sansa, the woman he once called sister, the woman he is in love with.

Not that Bran knows that part, necessarily.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Jon says. “I’m still trying to make amends to Sansa. I don’t even know if she’s truly forgiven me. I thought she had, but lately — ” He cuts himself off. There’s no need to get into that. “I broke her trust. All I can do is try to show her that she can trust me again.”

“How?”

“By being here. By protecting her and Meria, and by treating her as my queen and … and supporting her choices, even if I don’t understand them.”

“You mean remarrying. You don’t think she should marry Robin. You think she should marry for love.”

The hollow feeling in Jon’s stomach only grows. Something in Bran’s tone gives Jon the sense that he knows perfectly well how Jon feels about Sansa. Once again Jon wonders what Bran has seen, what he still can see. 

Has he seen how Jon nearly murdered Littlefinger in the crypts? Has he seen Davos taking Jon aside on Dragonstone and telling him whatever it was he felt for Sansa, he had to stop being so damn obvious about it? Has he seen the moment of Daenerys’s death, how his resolve to kill her after her massacre hardened into fury when she threatened Winterfell, threatened _Sansa_? 

“It’s Sansa’s decision, and it’s not my place to question it,” Jon says, trying to sound convincing. “Aren’t we supposed to be talking about your friend Meera? Tell me more about her.”

Though Bran doesn’t look entirely convinced, his half-smile returns at the sound of Meera’s name, and for the rest of the hour, the girl is all they speak of.

*

Of course, Bran is right: Jon does think Sansa should wait for love. He doesn’t understand her rush to marry again. She can’t possibly love the Arryn boy, and even if Lord Arryn thinks he loves her, it is obvious that he will never be a true partner, a steady man that she can rely on. Certainly he will never make her knees weak or her cheeks flush.

Sansa deserves someone who romances her, who writes her beautiful letters and knows all the poetry she likes. Someone who brings her flowers every morning with her breakfast. Who kisses her until her lips are red and swollen, who kisses between her legs until she comes so many times that she begs him to stop. Someone who adores Meria and who’ll be a good father to her and any children that may come. Someone who makes Sansa feel safe and happy. Someone who makes her feel as beloved as she is.

Sansa deserves better than Robin Arryn — but, he tells himself for the hundredth time, she deserves better than Jon too.

***

As Sansa is picking through her jewelry box, deciding which brooch to wear, the door to her room opens with a bang. 

“Tell me you’re not going to do it.” 

Sansa sighs. Looking up from her dressing table, she finds her sister in the doorway, Arya’s face stony, the way it always is when she’s upset about something. 

“Arya, how many times must I ask you to knock?”

“Don’t ignore the question.”

“You didn’t actually ask a question.”

Arya’s hand moves the pommel of her sword, gripping it firmly as if she means to unsheath it. It’s a nervous tic, not a threat, but Sansa dislikes the habit all the same. It reminds her of the men of kingsguard, their constant need to remind her of their strength and power over her, their delight in frightening her. 

It’s not a fair comparison, and Sansa would never breathe a word of it to Arya, but she still wishes her sister would find another way of soothing herself, at least when she’s around Sansa.

“Well?” Arya cocks her eyebrow. When Sansa doesn’t say anything, she elaborates, “In the kitchen they say you’re having a private dinner with Robin tonight. Everyone thinks you really do mean to marry him. To make _him_ King in the North.”

Turning back to her jewelry box, Sansa takes a few steadying breaths. So: the rumor is already spreading. She will have to make her decision soon.

Arya continues to press, “You’re not really thinking about it, are you?”

One of the brooches catches Sansa’s eye: a scaled silver fish with a sapphire eye, a gift from her uncle after Meria was born. Tully blood is what she and Robin have in common. It is a good reminder.

“Even if I am thinking about it,” Sansa says slowly, “Robin would only ever be King Consort, like Symon. I wouldn’t hand over the North to anyone who’s not a Stark.”

“That’s not my point.”

“Then what _is_ your point?” Sansa’s voice is sharper than she intends, but she can’t help adding, almost petulantly, “You didn’t want me to marry Symon either.”

“I didn’t want you to rush into anything because I knew you weren’t thinking straight!”

Sansa takes a few deep breaths to calm herself and looks at her reflection in the mirror, letting the cross expression fade from her face until her face is as blank and unreadable as a fresh sheet of parchment. She selects a silver-cloak to drape around her shoulders, the pearlescent gleam of the scales embroidered on the shoulders the only touch of color aside from the brooch, which she affixes at her throat so that it holds the cloak closed.

Finally, smoothing her braid over her shoulder, she says cooly, “It was a smart alliance. Symon was a smart match, and a good man.” 

“Yes,” Arya concedes, “it was a smart match, and Symon was nice enough, but _gods_ , Sansa, you married him with a broken heart.”

What? Sansa’s blank parchment face is dyed red as heat floods her cheeks, her heart lurching painfully within the cage of her ribs. “Excuse me?” she manages, sounding strangled and breathless. “I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.” 

“I think you do. I don’t want to know what happened between you and Jon before I came home — ”

“ _Nothing_ happened— ”

“— and I wouldn’t have even realized anything was off if Gendry hadn’t mentioned it. But he was right, wasn’t he? You were in love with Jon.”

It takes a few deep breaths, cool air in her nose and then out, in and out, four or five times, before the room stops spinning and her pulse returns to something like normal. She prays Arya isn’t taking her reaction as a confirmation. It’s just that she’s never heard the words aloud before, that’s all. It startled her, to hear the accusation. It knocked her off her guard.

Besides, if she hadn’t responded with shock, Arya would’ve found that _more_ suspicious.

“In love with Jon?” She scoffs. “Don’t be absurd. He’s our brother.”

“He’s my brother.” Arya’s hand leaves her sword and she crosses her arms over her chest, and all it once it feels like she and her sister are at odds again, with Littlefinger between them and a thousand suspicions of wrongdoing. “I don’t know _what_ Jon is to you.”

“Please, Arya.”

“I can still tell when you’re lying.”

Sometimes Sansa wonders if Arya realizes how cruel she is when she’s like this, and how painful it can be to be dissected beneath her gaze. It’s not like being flayed — she knows better than most exactly how that feels — but it _is_ as if Arya is forcibly stripping some invisible layer of protection from her, leaving her bare, exposed. 

It’s almost as painful as when Bran looks at her with his faraway eyes, and Sansa remembers that he’s seen all the worst things that have ever happened to her.

However, Sansa doesn’t have the luxury of shrinking from Arya or her accusations, so instead she straightens her spine and hardens her features, letting her attention slide past Arya rather than allowing her to see how Sansa’s been affected. “I’ll be going now,” she says, turning on her heel. “As you are apparently already aware, I have a dinner to attend.”

With that she brushes past her sister and strides into the corridor.

Brienne, who’d been stationed outside, follows only a step or two behind, and though she doesn’t say anything, Sansa can feel the worried glances she casts, glances that do little to make Sansa feel better. They arrive at the private dining hall without a word having passed between them, and just as Brienne opens her mouth, Robin and his escort appear.

“Cousin,” Robin greets with a smile that does not meet his eyes. “Good evening. You look as lovely as ever.”

“Thank you. Good evening.”

It takes Sansa a moment to retrieve the name of Robin’s guard from her memory. “Good evening to you as well, ser Rufus.” He’s a handful of years Robin’s elder, and last she saw him, when Robin visited after Meria’s birth, he’d only just been knighted, a bright-spirited boy who’d seemed deeply flattered to become part of his lord’s personal guard. At the moment, he looks unusually stern, but at Sansa’s greeting, his brown eyes crinkle at the corners and he murmurs, “Good evening, Your Grace.”

As Sansa and Robin settle at the table set for two, with their guards taking their posts outside the door, Sansa tries to ask about Robin’s day. He’d ridden out with Lord Royce early that morning and wasn’t seen again until near dusk. Robin rides frequently, apparently on orders from his Maester, who told him that it’s essential for maintaining his strength, but Sansa does not think he’s ever been gone so long, at least not while here at Winterfell. He doesn’t like the weather and prefers the warmth of the castle’s walls.

When Sansa inquires about the ride, Robin’s manner grows strained and he offers another insincere smile. “It was a nice day. We thought we would see more of the wolfswood.”

“You’re growing accustomed to the cold, then?”

The grin vanishes. “No. No, I didn’t mean that. I still find it nearly unbearable. I don’t know how anyone lives here year round.”

“It can take some time for southerners to adjust.” 

Robin hums as if to agree before bringing his wine to his lips, taking a long, deep pull that doesn’t end until he’s drained his cup dry. His eyes dart over to meet Sansa’s for but a moment, perhaps hesitating a little before he reaches for the wine jug and refills his cup to the brim. Saying nothing, he lifts the cup back to his mouth and drinks some more.

 _Seven hells_ , Sansa thinks. _This isn’t going to go well._

Her instincts are right. Over the course of the meal, Robin speaks little and eats less, picking at his food as if were just a child again, refusing to eat his greens, and when, after another full glass of wine, Sansa politely suggests that he pace himself, he sneers at her like she hasn’t seen him do since they were in the Vale together. She’d meant to at least raise the subject of marriage, but now she keeps quiet, for the idea, already disagreeable, grows less appealing by the moment. Perhaps, despite Lord Royce’s assurances, Robin has not changed so much after all. He never would’ve been a husband she could love, but she’d imagined they might be friends, at least.

Wrong again. How many men will she allow to make a fool of her?

By the time they’ve finished with supper, both of them leaving behind more of their meals than they ate, there is a sharp pain building between Sansa’s eyes and an ache in her jaw from clenching down on her bitter words, and all she longs for is bed — but there are still matters to be taken care of tonight, letters and reports to be read, and she’d like to visit Meria before her daughter goes to sleep. She’ll read to her, or sing to her, whatever Meria wants. Sansa just wishes to be near her, and away from Robin.

With the last of her patience, Sansa tells her cousin, “My lord, thank you for joining me.”

He murmurs his drunken agreement, still picking at the food he won’t eat, still refusing to so much as look at her. Somehow, she manages not to roll her eyes.

“If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll retire now. We can resume trade discussions tomorrow.” She rises in her seat and glares down at him. “With any luck, we’ll finish within the week and you can make preparations to return to the Eyrie.”

This time, he must catch the sharpness of her tone, because he flinches, and when he finally looks at her, his expression is pinched with regret, maybe even guilt. He reaches up as if to take her hand, but she pulls it from his grasp, and his face crumples. “Sansa,” he says piteously. His breath reeks of wine. “I’m sorry.” 

“Whatever for?”

He stares at her, his eyes wet, his childish pout unseemly on a boy of nine and ten, but she says nothing. It’s up to him to find his way. She’s not his guardian. She’s not his wife. She now knows with certainty that she never wants to be.

Eventually Robin seems to realize that Sansa won’t speak first, for he sighs and says again, “I’m sorry.” Another miserable sigh and then he mumbles, “I don’t want to marry you.”

The silence that follows this pronouncement stretches on too long, but Sansa doesn’t know what to say. For some reason, she never imagined this — that Robin, whom she believed to be fond of her and whose leadership has primarily consisted of following the advice of his councilors, would be the one to object to the marriage. More perplexing, she never imagined he would be genuinely upset about the prospect. If anything, she feared her hesitation to marry would hurt _him_.

“I … ” Shaking herself, she finds her voice. “I beg your pardon?”

“I know Royce thinks it’s a good idea. I know it’s what my mother wanted too, once. I want to obey their wishes, but I can’t marry you, Sansa, I just can’t.” Before she can begin to make sense of his drunken rambling, he hurries to add, “Not that there’s anything wrong with you. You’re beautiful, you’re a queen, you’re terribly smart, but — ”

“It’s all right.”

“No, let me finish. Royce tried to convince me today. He said he’d already spoken with you, and he said it was the best thing I could do for the Vale, and I swear I would marry you if I could, but I can’t. I — I _can’t_. I can’t marry you.”

His voice is a whine, his cheeks flushed with emotion as much as drink, and if he were twelve, she’d think he was about to break into a tantrum. Now, however, the ragged edge of his words and the sadness in his eyes have her considering an alternative explanation.

“Robin, are you in love?”

The flash of panic on his face all but confirms her suspicions, but, after it takes a beat too long for him to recover his wits, he gasps, “What? Why would you think that? No, no, I’m simply — I’m not ready to marry. That’s all.” 

There must be some girl back at the Vale that he wants, or — gods, he’s not in love with _Arya_ , is he? They did spend weeks traveling together, but it’s impossible to imagine Arya ever having enough patience with him, or indeed vice versa, for her to take his fancy. He may not be the coddled little Sweetrobin he once was, but he still wants someone who’ll take care of him. Sansa knows him well enough to know that. No, there must be a girl back home for him. But then why wouldn’t Robin simply tell Lord Royce that this girl, whoever she is, is who he wants? Strengthening ties within the Vale would make sense, after so much instability. Unless she’s lowborn. Or perhaps she doesn’t return his affections.

“I’m not in love,” Robin swears, too vehement, so that is clear he means the precise opposite. Robin evidently care for this girl a great deal.

(Recalling her own denials to Arya earlier that evening, Sansa can only pray she was not this unconvincing.)

Sansa returns to her seat and clasps both of her hands around Robin’s, giving them a gentle squeeze. She’s not his mother or his wife, and she never will be, but she still cares for him. “Very well,” she says softly. “You’re not in love. And you don’t have to marry me.”

“Really?”

She almost feels she ought to be offended by how relieved he sounds, but instead she has to stifle a giggle. “Of course you don’t. It was only an idea, and not one I was particularly excited about either. We’re family. We’ll always be allies. We don’t need a marriage that neither of us wants in order to prove that.”

“We’re family,” he agrees.

“You do know that you’ll have to marry eventually,” Sansa says. “Just as I will. But don’t let Lord Royce bully you into anything you don’t want. Listen to his advice, he’s a good man who wants good things for you and for the Vale, but you are allowed to make decisions about your own life.” She bites her lip, debating her next words, but she cannot leave them unsaid: “I know Lysa was protective and didn’t always encourage your independence, and I know Petyr was controlling of both of us, but — you’re a man now, and this is _your_ life.”

Robin blinks at her, absorbing the words slowly, but then he flashes a tremulous smile and throws his arms around Sansa in a tight hug. She doubts he would’ve done it if he wasn’t drunk, but she doesn’t mind. “Sorry I’ve been such an ass tonight.” 

“It’s all right.”

He disentangles himself, rising a little unsteadily, and scans the empty hall until his gaze lands on the half-open doorway, where their guards stand watch. With color in his cheeks and a bright, _true_ smile on his lips, Robin tells Sansa, “I’m going to go tell Rufus.” He stumbles out from behind the table and takes a few wobbly steps toward the door.

Before he makes it even halfway there, ser Rufus has come to collect his lord: he throws an easy arm around Robin, supporting his weight, and smiles fondly as Robin begins to babble in too low of a tone for Sansa to hear. Together, the two men leave the hall, leaning against one another with the familiarity of brothers … or perhaps … 

All at once, Robin’s dilemma becomes clear to Sansa.

Her heart aches for him, for the troubles that lie ahead, and yet she finds she is happy for him too. He’s a boy who always needed a better love than what was given to him. She’s glad he’s finally found it.

Brienne escorts her back to her chamber, making no comment on the dinner or Robin’s inebriation or Sansa’s evident exhaustion, but despite her seemingly unconcerned silence, Sansa can’t resist informing her that there will be no marriage between the North and the Vale.

“I see.”

“That’s all you have to say? Come, Brienne, tell me the truth.”

Brienne’s stern face softens as she admits, “It’s not my place, but I admit I’m relieved to hear it. He seems a good enough boy but you deserve better than that. I know I don’t know much about marriage or love or babies, and I’ve misjudged such things in the past — ” 

Sansa touches Brienne’s arm, wanting to tell her that the world of love need not end with Jaime Lannister, that many men of the North have come to admire Brienne for all her strength and all her beauty, but before she can say anything, Brienne continues, “But I do know how it can be to get what you want, to get — ” Her cheeks flush red. “— _who_ you want, even for just a moment. You should know it too. More than anyone, you should be able to choose who you want.”

It’s a sweet thing to say, but Sansa can’t help the tide of melancholy that passes through her or the way her chest tightens, a pain she thought she’d forgotten.

Her voice is small when she asks, “What if who I want doesn’t want me? What if he’s not interested?”

Brienne’s furrowed brow and narrowed eyes somehow remind Sansa of her mother, for they are full of knowledge and care and just a little exasperation, but then Brienne bobs her head in a deferential nod, a show of loyalty, before she says, “Forgive me for saying so, Your Grace, but if you think that’s true, then I think you haven’t been paying attention.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Thanks for reading! Next (FINAL) part up soon, I promise. And then I'll hopefully be updating TSOML shortly after that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the change in rating! (That def wasn't in the plans but then again, how much of this fic was?)
> 
> There will be an epilogue after this chapter.

Despite rumors of a private dinner between the Queen in the North and the Lord of the Vale — rumors that had Arya confirmed with a snort of disgust — there is no announcement of an engagement. Each day Jon braces for it, and each day, it fails to come. Lord Arryn and Sansa continue to spend their days together, and his friendliness and her politeness do not seem to have waned, but there’s nothing particularly _intimate_ in their interactions, or even any particular shows of partnership. Sansa is still the queen and Lord Arryn her guest, and if she intends to make him her husband, she gives no indication of it.

Does that mean that it’s all settled and is simply as passionless as a trade agreement? Does it mean marriage negotiations are still underway? Jon doesn’t dare hope that the idea of marriage hasn’t come up at all, not after what Arya told him.

She’d found him in the training yard one morning and hissed out the story of Sansa and Lord Arryn’s dinner the night before, telling Jon that she’d asked Sansa flat out if she intended to marry the boy and Sansa hadn’t said no.

Turning toward the archery target to hide his expression from Arya, he’d pulled free one of his arrows and said, _I thought you didn’t care about any of this_ , and Arya had snapped back, _I didn’t think she was actually considering it!_

He doesn’t know if it’s her anger with Sansa or something else entirely, but a few days later, before the heart tree, Arya informs him that she’s decided it’s time to leave Winterfell, claiming that she wants to find Gendry and see if he’s finally come to his senses. As she speaks, she stands to one side of him, sword in hand as she moves through a series of practiced forms, her blade weaving artfully through the air.

“Hopefully,” she says, not looking over to where Jon sits sharpening Longclaw, “he’s put marrying out of his mind.”

Jon draws the whetstone along his blade a few more times, silent save for the metallic rasp of the stone against his sword as he gathers the courage to ask, “Why don’t you want to marry Gendry? Do you not love him?”

For the first time, Arya falters in her form, just for the space of a breath, before she steadies once more. “I love him.” Her tone is light, almost careless, but Jon isn’t fooled. “But if he makes a wife of me, then what? What expectations will it give him? I’m not a lady. If we married, he’d want me to be his lady. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be his. I don’t want to belong to anyone.”

“He’d belong to you too,” Jon reminds her softly, but she just shakes her head.

“I don’t want that either. I don’t want to give up my freedom so we can settle down and have babies and become just like everyone else.”

Jon frowns down at Longclaw, turning over her words in his mind. He can’t say he’s entirely surprised that marriage and motherhood hold little appeal for her, but deep in his heart, he can’t understand it. As children, part of what bonded them was the shared feeling that they never quite belonged: Jon the bastard, Arya the wolfgirl. He lived in the shadow of Robb, the trueborn son and future Lord of Winterfell, and she in the shadow of Sansa, the perfect lady who’d one day be a queen.

But where Arya has embraced her unconventionality, clung fiercely to her knowledge of herself and her certainty that she has no desire to be a perfect lady, all Jon wants, all he’s ever wanted, is to belong. As a boy he wanted what was meant to be Robb’s: to be a lord, to rule Winterfell with his lady wife.

He wants it still.

He wants to be wanted, to belong somewhere, to belong to someone — not because he is frightened or desperate, not because he has no other choice than to play a part, but because he loves and is loved as deeply, as unconditionally, as he always dreamed.

“Maybe you should talk to Gendry about it. It might be he won’t want any of those things you said. Might be he just wants to give you whatever _you_ want.”

Needle cuts through the air more forcefully, a little of the ease lost. When Arya speaks, her voice brooks no argument: “What I want is to not get married.”

Jon considers his fierce little sister, how strong and certain she is, and he knows all he can do is hope that she knows her own heart. He would never ask her to be someone she’s not. He just doesn’t want to see her end up hurt and lonely either.

“Fair enough,” he says. “I’d say if Gendry’s a shit about it, I’ll give him a talking to, but I suspect you can handle him on your own.”

At that, she cracks a smile. “I can handle Gendry just fine. What I want to know is, what’s your plan for handling Robin?”

His hand slips and his blade _whines_. He tries to hide his wince, setting the stone aside. “My plan?” 

“You’ve got one, don’t you? We can’t let her marry him.”

“It’s not my place to interfere,” Jon manages to say, enunciating it clearly, even though he’s imagined cornering Robin Arryn with Ghost so often that last week he sent Ghost away on a long hunt for fear he’d up hurting the lordling — or at least scaring him senseless. Arya was right the first time: Sansa can take care of herself. Part of him just wants to be sure Arryn knows what’s in store for him if he ever hurts Sansa. “I think the best thing I can do is stay out of it.”

However, Arya, never one to give up, says, “That’s bullshit and you know it. We’re a family, Jon. That means it is our place to make sure that Sansa doesn’t make a stupid mistake. It’s our place to make sure she gets the life she deserves.”

Jon says nothing as he his thumb over the edge of his sword to test its sharpness. It’s not quite there yet. He picks up the whetstone once more and returns to his task, focusing on the repetitive movement, the bone-deep familiarity of the gesture, and all the while, part of him can’t shake the feeling that Arya may be right.

*

That night at dinner, Jon is slurping down his venison stew when he glances up to see Sansa towering over him, dressed in a lilac gown instead of her usual black or midnight blue, her hair loose around her shoulders and her crown gleaming atop her head. Hastily, he wipes his wet mouth with the back of his hand, but it only makes him feel all the more like the wildling she surely sees him as. Though he was once a king, he never wore his title half as well as she wears hers.

“Jon.” She keeps her voice low, though she’s caught the attention of everyone sitting around him — mostly the castle’s men, since today Arya and Bran have taken their seats at the front of the room. Jon had been asked to join them, but he’d declined, giving his space up to Robin Arryn and Yohn Royce. 

“There’s something I’d like to speak with you about,” Sansa says. “When you’ve finished eating — ” Her eyes drop to his stew, then flicker up to his mouth, or, rather, his beard. He wipes at his face with a napkin this time, hoping to clear away any remaining traces of food. 

Sansa clears her throat. “As I was saying, when you’ve finished, perhaps you’d accompany me to my solar?”

Stomach flipping, he considers the last dregs in his bowl and the remaining crust of bread for scarcely a moment before he climbs to his feet. “I’m done.” He wouldn’t be able to eat anything more anyway, not now that she’s sought him out to tell him … something.

“Oh.” A pretty pink flush dusts her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to rush you to finish. I just wanted to catch you before you left the hall altogether. I can wait.”

“No need. Unless you’d like more time?”

Wordlessly, she shakes her head, and when he offers her his arm, he notices her brief hesitation, but she takes it.

They leave the hall and begin to trace the familiar path to Sansa’s solar, with Jon’s heart racing all the while as he wonders what it is Sansa wishes to say to him: maybe she’s going to tell him that she really is engaged to Robin Arryn, or maybe Bran has spoken with her about his plans to venture south to Greywater Watch and she wants Jon to accompany him, or maybe she wants to once again discuss the hurts and the mistakes of years ago. He prays it’s not that. With each step his tension grows, and Sansa must feel it too, for her warm hand flexes uncertainly on his forearm.

When they are almost there, Sansa says, “You trimmed your hair. And your beard.”

Startled, he reaches up with his free hand to stroke his groomed chin. He’d already forgotten the impulsive decision he’d made the day before, tired of his hair always tickling his neck and his beard beginning to itch. Maybe he _doesn’t_ look so very much the wildling anymore.

“Thought it was time,” he says.

“If you return to the Wall, Tormund will hardly recognize you.”

Her tone is light, but he finds himself frowning. “I’ve no plans of returning to the Wall.”

Once they are inside the solar, she peels away from his side in order to take up a candle from a wall sconce, shielding the flame with her hand. She moves silently through the room, touching her flame to the clusters of partially-melted candles, until the room is bathed in warm, flickering light. Only after returning her candle to its home does she finally look at him, her hands clasped behind her back, her spine stiff and her jaw clenched, and if it weren’t for the color of her dress and the sight of her crown, he might think he’d been thrown back in time to that night after he’d brought Daenerys here and she’d asked him why he bent the knee. He can still remember the spark in her eyes, the huff of her breath, as she all but accused him of falling for the pretty face of the Targaryen queen. 

_Why_ didn’t he explain it all to her then?

(Because he still had Daenerys’s threat burning in his ears: _She doesn’t have to like me, but she has to respect me._ )

Maybe she sees recognizes his apprehension, because Sansa releases a slow breath and lets her hands fall to her sides, and then in a gentler voice than he expects, she says, “Arya tells me she’s leaving.”

“Yes … she told me too.”

“Tell me, are you going with her?”

“I … ” He searches her face for a clue, but she gives nothing away, and so, uncertain what answer it is she wants to hear, whether she wants him here at Winterfell or not, he takes a chance. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

It must be the right answer, because her shoulders drop and instead of hard ice, something warm gleams in her eyes, a hope that is not quite hidden. “You’re not leaving?”

“No. _No_. Sansa, I told you — I’m here for as long as you want me.”

He edges a little nearer to where she is standing, halfway across the room, his feet stuttering to a stop only when she bites her lip, looking up from underneath her lashes. “Why have you been avoiding me, then?”

“I haven’t — ”

“You have.”

There’s no anger in her words, not the frustration he’s grown accustomed to expecting, but rather _sadness_. His chest aches at the sound of it, and at the realization of what it means. She still doesn’t trust him. Maybe she will never trust him again.

Then again, why should she? He still isn’t telling her the truth.

Blowing a sharp breath between his teeth, Jon admits, “I have.” She blinks, clearly hurt, and he continues, “It’s not you. That’s not why. I’m not avoiding _you_. But I’m trying to stand behind your decisions, and if I’m around you and your cousin, I’m going to say something I shouldn’t. It’s your choice if you marry again. My feelings about it don’t matter. I _know_ that, and I’m trying to stay out of it. That’s why.”

It’s her turn to draw closer, first one step, then two, her eyes darting back and forth as she stares at him, and he realizes with a sinking feeling that perhaps he’s already said too much. Her breathing has grown harder, her chest rising and falling, the pale skin across her collarbone beginning to flush, and her hands, he realizes, are clasped together again, the thumb of one hand digging into the palm of another. 

He drags his gaze back up her body and watches her eyes narrow. “Like what?” she murmurs. “What shouldn’t you say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She lifts her chin and orders, “ _Tell me_ ,” and he almost drops to his knees right there. Gods, but he’s utterly gone for her. Even her commands set his skin ablaze.

He tries to collect himself, collect his thoughts, but she is watching him expectantly so he starts to talk, “I think … ” The little space that remains between still feels like far too much; still feels as if they are kingdoms apart, as if he is still on Dragonstone, missing her, dreaming of her, plotting a way to get back home to her. “I think,” he says as he closes the last of the distance between them, “you should wait to marry. You’ve had little time to mourn your husband. It may not seem possible now, but you’ll find someone to love again. You love Symon still, but if you give it time — ”

Suddenly Sansa presses her palm flat to his chest, as if feeling his heartbeat, as if he holding him back from taking one step closer, as if caressing a lover in the night, and his words fail him.

“Wait,” she murmurs. “Wait, do you think … ?” She blinks rapidly, her mouth forming a little ‘o’ as she rakes her eyes over him. “Jon, I did love Symon.”

“That’s what I’m — ”

“ _Hush_.” Her hand leaves his chest and, in a move that shocks him, she presses it over his mouth instead. She seems surprised too, for she blushes near-scarlet, but she doesn’t move her hand. “Listen to me. I loved Symon. He was a kind husband and a good friend and a wonderful father to Meria, and it broke my heart when he died, but … I was never in love with him.”

His lips part beneath her fingers, and only when he exhales shakily against them does she return her hand to her side. He can see how it trembles.

“I wasn’t in love with him,” she repeats, the color high on her cheeks, “and he wasn’t in love with me. Maybe, in time, we would’ve felt that way, but we didn’t have enough time.”

It means something, that she is sharing this truth with him. It means something that she wants him to know. 

Yet he thought he’d understood what it was she and Symon shared; her fondness for Symon, even after his death, is unmistakable, and Arya has made it seem as if the marriage was a particularly happy one. Most tellingly, she’d made the decision to marry him so quickly. He’d thought love was the only possible reason for the rush.

It means something that she is saying something different, but he can’t quite bring himself to understand _what_.

“I didn’t realize,” Jon admits at last.

“Yes, I gathered. Arya never told you?”

“Arya said that he made you happy. When she told me you were having his child, I thought … ” He shakes his head. “Even before that, when I saw you two together at Riverrun, I could tell he made you happy.”

She barks a humorless laugh. “Happy? Jon, I was _miserable_ at Riverrun.”

“You were?”

“Of course I was. Symon made me happy eventually, but I was not happy then.” She watches him closely, her brow knit. “Don’t you remember how awful it was? King’s Landing was gone. The central seat of power was gone. There was no obvious successor, except … well, except for you, and you refused to even discuss it. And while the North was finally free, every kingdom was suspicious of us for our role in helping Daenerys. If not for Robin and Uncle Edmure, I doubt I’d have been given a seat at the table for those discussions.”

The truth is, all Jon remembers from those days is the smell of burnt flesh in his nose, the taste of ash on his tongue, and the nightmares that were half memory, half fear. He remembers waking each morning in his little room in Riverrun and heaving whatever he’d had for dinner into the chamberpot, unable to stop thinking about Daenerys’s blood, wet on his hands, and the way she’d shown not a drop of remorse when he confronted her with her crimes. He remembers feasting on the sight of Sansa, safe and well, with guilt eating at his heart that she’d ever been in danger in the first place.

He remembers being asked if he wanted to rule and shouting that he should be _dead_ , not on a throne.

Still watching him carefully, Sansa says, “I knew that whatever happened at the Riverrun summit was going to change the future of the continent, so it was imperative to make smart decisions, but I couldn’t think straight. All I could think about was how close I’d come to losing you and Arya, and even though you were both alive, you were also obviously still suffering from what happened in King’s Landing. Then you told me that you wanted to leave. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me so much, but you have to understand … I’d been fighting all along to free both the North _and you_ from Daenerys, and then, once you’d freed yourself, you ran away. I couldn’t understand it.”

“I was ashamed,” he breathed. “I still am.”

“Because you killed her?”

“No.” He wishes it were that easy, that it was only the treason and the kinslaying and the oathbreaking that made him loathe his own reflection. “I’m ashamed of who I had to become around her, and how many terrible things I let her do. I didn’t put that dagger in her chest when I worried she would lose control in King’s Landing. I didn’t do it when she burned Varys alive. Do you know why I finally killed her?”

“You killed her because she was a tyrant. She murdered a million innocent people in King’s Landing. She destroyed the city.”

“You’re right. She was a tyrant.” He squeezes his eyes closed, not wanting to see Sansa’s face when he admits, “And I was afraid of her. I waited too long because I was afraid. I thought I could handle her and then when I realized what she truly was, I was terrified.”

“But you did it. You’re a hero.”

He shakes his head, eyes still closed, that city of death and ash coming to life behind his eyelids. “When I finally killed her,” he says, “it was because even after she’d gotten everything she said she wanted, I knew she wasn’t done. I knew that sooner or later, she would come for Winterfell. She’d come for you. I thought if I just gave her everything she wanted, I could placate her somehow, but then I realized it would never be enough. She knew Westeros would never love her. She knew I would never love her. She knew you would never let her rule.”

Sansa inhales softly and he dares to look at her again. “She wanted me dead.” She sounds somber but not shocked. “She knew I was plotting against her. She knew I told your secret.”

“She knew,” he agrees. “Gods, Sansa, I wish you hadn’t told anyone.” Before she can protest, he adds, “I understand why you did, I do. I didn’t give you much choice. But I still wish you hadn’t.”

“She was a monster. At first I was afraid I was the only one who could see it. Then, when I realized Tyrion had doubts — that you must’ve too — I couldn’t think what else to do. It was stupid to trust Tyrion, but I thought he could help me find a way to defeat her. She shouldn’t have been ruling. I thought he realized that.”

“I know. It’s all right.”

Her mouth pinches flat and her eyes gleam like crystal, and when she asks, “You forgive me?” her voice is tight, and he cannot help but go to her again and gather her hands in his own. 

Conscious of his calluses and his burns, he tries to keep his touch feather soft, brushing his thumbs over her knuckles as delicately as he can. “That was never in question. I was angry but I don’t blame you for any of it. Never have. I gave you no reason to do any differently than you did.” He swipes his thumb across her hand once more, keeping the pressure light. “But tell me truly, can you ever forgive me?”

His heart sinks to his stomach when she pulls her hands from his grip — but then she throws them around his neck instead, pulling him so close that he has no choice to hold her, his arms around her waist, his hands pressed to the small of her back. 

“I forgive you,” she whispers. Her nose touches his shoulder and her palm cups the back of his head, and when he breathes, all he can smell, all he can taste, are roses. 

She lifts her head, her nose grazing his jaw, her huffed breath damp against his skin, and he has to scoot his hips back before his body betrays him, but she feels him shift and asks, “Jon?”

He tries to change the subject, but when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is a single question in a hoarse voice: “Are you going to marry your cousin?”

It does the trick, however. She unwinds from him entirely, drawing back out of reach, so that even the trace of her warmth fades, and though he knows it is safer this way, he regrets the distance already. “I’m … ” She ducks her head. “I’m not going to marry Robin.”

“That’s good. If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want. It’s what we both want.”

“ _Both?_ ” He’d been under the impression that Robin Arryn had come to Winterfell with the express purpose of proposing this union to Sansa. Another misguided assumption, it seems.

“Robin doesn’t want to marry me,” she says, and though Jon can’t say he understands how such a thing is possible, he’s grateful to hear it. Her sweet smile indicates that she doesn’t mind the boy’s lack of interest either. “I believe he doesn’t want to marry anyone any time soon.” 

“You’ll wait, then? For love, I mean.”

He curses himself silently as he watches her face fall, her expression clouding, but before he can take the question back, she shrugs. “I don’t know. Sometimes I worry that I want too much. That I can pretend I’ve learned better, but what I want is still every bit as impossible as what I dreamed of as a girl.” Avoiding his eyes, she hugs her arms around herself. “I want to love the man I marry, but love on its own isn’t enough. I want him to be someone I can trust to be kind and faithful to me always, someone who trusts me too and talks to me and lets me help him. I want someone brave, who’ll do anything to protect our family. Even if it means sacrificing his honor. I don’t want a noble fool. I want a good man.” He stares, mesmerized, as she licks her lips and lifts her burning blue eyes to meet his gaze, something daring and bold in the look she gives him, even as her voice, when she speaks, betrays a little hesitancy. “I’d like — I’d really like for him to love me too, if it’s possible. Do you think it’s possible, Jon?”

“I — ” He tries to swallow, his throat dry as dust. “I do.”

“Then I’ll wait,” she says, another soft smile curving her pretty lips. “I can wait a little longer. But, Jon — ”

“Yes?” he croaks.

“I won’t wait forever.”

*

The entire way back to his room, her words haunt him, her voice beckoning — _seeming_ to beckon — him close, the tone somehow warmer and softer than the pelt of a baby hare or the touch of a woman’s skin, the touch of _her_ skin.

He must stop with these fantasies. She doesn’t mean what he thinks she means. She can’t. Even if she could, even if there’s a possibility that he’s not imagining it, he cannot let his recklessness rule him. He’s already ruined so much; he won’t ruin her, he won’t ruin _this_. Not again. If he fucks this up, he’ll lose it all: his home, his heart, his family. Her. He’ll lose her, forever this time.

As soon as she’d told him she wouldn’t wait forever, she’d given him a look that had felt _expectant_ , and he’d left with an abrupt goodbye and an awkward bob of his head. If he’d stayed a moment longer, there’s no telling what confessions would’ve come spilling out of his mouth. He would’ve told her that he loves her, that he’s loved her as long as he can remember, maybe from the second she stepped into his arms at Castle Black, maybe even long before that, when she was a girl singing sweet songs as she tied pink ribbons around Lady’s neck. He would’ve told her that he’s loved her all these years he’s been gone, and that he came home because he saw Tormund’s fire-kissed baby and suddenly he couldn’t bear to be apart from her any longer. He would’ve told her that he loves her daughter as if she were his own, that if he’s not careful he’ll give Meria a thousand dolls, he’ll give Meria anything she wants, and he’d like very much to give Sansa as many more children as she desires. 

So, hastening down the corridor, past the nursery, past Bran’s chambers, Jon silently pleads with himself to _keep it together_. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. His heart is bursting. But he’ll hold it in, at least until he gets to his chambers.

Except, when he gets there, the door is blocked by the large and furry form of Ghost, who it seems has returned from his hunt, already aware that Robin Arryn is no longer worth fretting over. 

“Come away from there, boy,” Jon says, but instead of obeying, Ghost plants his hindquarters there on the cold stone in front of the doorway. “Come away, Ghost.” Ghost just glowers at Jon with those fierce red eyes, and Jon knows precisely what his expression means: it is a reproach, an accusation. As usual, Ghost knows him better than he knows himself.

Both times Jon went south, Ghost knew he was making a mistake. When Jon stayed so far north for so long, Ghost knew he was being a coward. And now, Ghost’s eyes make it clear, Jon is still a coward.

_No, you’re scared_. He can almost hear Bran’s voice. _There’s a difference_.

Wasn’t that what Ned Stark would always say? _A man can only be brave when he’s afraid_.

Jon has been afraid for such a long time, from the moment Sansa appeared at the gates of Castle Black and he knew he had something to lose far more precious than his own life. He feared dragons and dead men and the truth of his own identity. He feared Daenerys and her temper and her demands. He feared facing everything that he’d done — everything he’d failed to do — in King’s Landing and before it.

For years, he’s been frozen in terror, choking on guilt and false promises and dutiful kisses, hating Daenerys and hating himself in almost equal measure.

Yet, looking at Ghost, with his torn ear and his lolling tongue and his true devotion, true friendship, despite everything, Jon knows that he doesn’t want to live like this anymore.

He’s so tired of every breath tasting of fear and shame.

Jon leans down and presses his forehead to Ghost’s, murmuring, “Thank you” and grinning which Ghost’s tail begins to thump against the floor. Then, turning away from his room, Jon retraces his path back through the corridors, all the way back to the Queen’s solar.

When he stands before the door, he doesn’t let himself hesitate before he pounds on it, thumping more with more urgency than the situation probably calls for, and yet he cannot stop himself, cannot slow himself. Everything feels lighter and faster without the fear weighing him down.

The door creaks open.

“Jon?”

She is so fucking beautiful, with the candlelight streaming behind her, her copper hair wreathed in a golden glow and adorably mussed from removing her crown, but her eyes are red and there are teartracks on her cheeks, and he is the biggest fool that ever lived. 

_“Sansa_ , _”_ he murmurs, reaching for her, and despite all his mistakes, she lets him. She lets him pull her into his arms, lets his hands cradle her face, thumbs brushing away the remnants of her tears. “I love you,” he confesses without preamble, blunt and artless because he knows no other way. Not when it’s real. He doesn’t know how to say something eloquent and romantic, how to give her the poetry she deserves. Still, he’ll give her this. “I’ve loved you for so long.”

Her eyes widen, and he adds hurriedly, “I don’t expect anything. Now, or ever. I just needed you to know. You can tell me to leave and I will. Or I can wait until you’re ready. Whatever you — ”

But before he can finish, she surges forward and cuts him off with a kiss, soft at first and then harder, her lips more fervent, her tongue licking into his mouth with a moan. Eventually, she pulls away just long enough to say, “I’m tired of waiting,” before her lips find his again, and again, and again.

***

They don’t wait until they are married. They don’t even wait for a bed.

As a girl, Sansa would’ve been scandalized, but as a woman, it is thrilling. Jon’s desperation for her, and her own keen desire, are surely better than any mattress could be. His large, hot hands skimming down her back before closing around her waist and lifting her onto her desk, his mouth never ceasing to trail kisses down her throat. His tongue swipes over her collarbone, making her gasp, and when her legs fall open, spreading wide enough for him to stand between them, she can feel the heat and hardness of him against her damp center. Slowly, too slowly, he grinds against her.

With clumsy fingers, she reaches down to unlace his breeches, but he hisses and pulls away before she can achieve her goal. “Jon?” He doesn’t retreat, however; instead, he gathers her skirts and pushes them up to her hips, out of the way and into her hands. She clutches the fabric mindlessly, already trembling as she watches him drop to his knees.

He drags her smallclothes down her legs without regard for the delicate stitches or the ribbons holding them together at the hips, but she couldn’t care less, not when he parts her folds with two thick fingers, holding her open as his mouth, his _perfect_ mouth, kisses her most intimate place. The rasp of his beard almost makes her giggle, but then he flattens his tongue against her slit, dragging it up until he touches the part of her that takes her breath away, and at the sound of her gasp, he _groans_ and yanks her hips even closer to his mouth, as if he wants to taste her even more deeply, as if he is taking as much pleasure in this act as she is. 

With his tongue sliding furiously, relentlessly, over that perfect spot, she can no longer keep her eyes open or her voice quiet. “Ohhhh,” she moans. “ _Jon_.”

A finger slides through her folds and finds the slick opening of her cunny, stroking it almost tenderly. She waits for him to thrust his fingers inside, waits for him to spread her open for his manhood, but instead his fingertip continues to circle the rim of her opening, sending quivers shooting all through her and she feels her cunny squeezing desperately, wanting more. She whines his name but soon the whine turns into a gasp, a pleading _Jon_ repeatedover and over, unable to find another word, another thought, while his tongue lashes against her and his rough finger finally slips a little deeper, and — 

Her hips lift off the desk as she cries out, pleasure driving every thought from her body except _yes yes YES_.

Even after she has regained her breath, her legs are still shaking, but she can’t wait any longer and grabs at the collar of his shirt and drags him up to kiss her, savoring the taste of herself on his tongue. 

“You’re perfect,” he whispers, nipping at his lips. “I love you so much.”

Taking his manhood in hand, she guides him toward her opening, but he hesitates just as he positions himself exactly where she needs him. “You’re certain?” he asks in a half-pained whisper, and she can feel just how hard and how eager he is for her, how he is straining to be inside of her, but still he waits for her response. 

“Yes, Jon, _please_.” She clutches his shoulder, fisting the fabric of his shirt. “I need you. I trust you. I lo— ”

He hips surge forward and he pushes inside of her before she can finish her sentence, but she knows he understands, she knows he’s thinking the same thing, that maybe nothing in the world has ever felt so good.

*

After, they do find their way to Sansa’s bed, their faces red with embarrassment and joy and exertion, and then they make love again, slowly this time, both of them stripped bare, with Sansa sitting astride Jon, drunk on the way he looks at her, the blackness of his eyes, and wondering if he has always been this obvious in his desire for her. In his love.

Jon brings her to completion twice more that night, and when he spends his seed inside of her, she doesn’t worry about what life may take root. Instead, she _hopes_.

In the morning he leaves her briefly in order to wash and dress in his own room, but he kisses her breathless before he goes, and by the time he returns, he is just in time to accompany Sansa to the nursery. There, they find Meria already awake, her doll cradled under her arm as she sings babyish nonsense to it.

“Mama!” she cries when she spots them, her face breaking open in that smile that still shatters Sansa’s heart in the very best way. “Uncle Jon!”

Meria lifts her arms, and though she really is getting too old to be carried everywhere, Jon doesn’t hesitate to scoop her up. Privately, Sansa admires the flex of his muscles beneath his shirt as he easily holds her daughter’s weight, and she can’t help but wonder what her ten-year-old self would think if she were ever to learn that Sansa found a man’s strength more appealing when he holding a child than when he held a sword.

“Good morning, princess,” Jon says, dropping a kiss atop Meria’s head, and Sansa’s heart does another little flip. “You ready for breakfast?”

Sansa greets Alessa, who stands with her hands clasped, mutely watching the scene before her, and when Alessa’s eyes flicker knowingly over to Sansa, Sansa wonders how foolishly in love she must look.

However, all the nurse says is, “Good morning, Your Grace? Will you be wanting me for breakfast?”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Sansa tells Meria. “We’re doing a family breakfast today. I should be able to manage her on my own.”

“Well, not quite on your own,” Alessa says, and Sansa follows her gaze to where Jon stands, still bouncing Meria in his arms, asking her something or other about her doll, Jonquil.

“I suppose you’re right.” Sansa nods to Alessa, then asks Jon, “You’ve got her?”

“I’ve got her,” Jon replies with a shy smile.

They’ve discussed it a little already, after their second round of lovemaking, before they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Jon says he wants to be as much a father to Meria as he would be to any babes he might get on Sansa. He is Meria’s uncle Jon now, but Sansa suspects she’ll have no difficulties coming to know him as Father. Yet neither he nor Sansa wish to deny Symon’s existence, or to prevent Meria from knowing about and feeling connected to Symon, experiencing whatever grief and love may come. Symon is part of Meria too, and without him and his kindness and his gentle humor, without the way he liked to tickle Sansa’s feet when she was laying in bed, the way he showed her that there was nothing inherently cruel about marriage, Meria would not be here. 

Sansa never wants Meria to feel as if she’s different, an outsider, for she is a child of the North, but she is also a child of Dorne, and that will always matter too.

In the darkness, Sansa had whispered, _I want her to love you, and to see you as her father, I do, but I want her to have the space to love Symon as her father too_. _And … I want her to love her half-siblings better than I loved you when we were children._

_All things considered,_ Jon had murmured, _I’m rather glad you didn’t love me as your brother._ His low chuckle, almost syrupy with sex and drowsiness, had been unbearably arousing, but she restrained herself from stroking her hands down his stomach and getting them started all over again. Softly, Jon said, _I swear to you, Sansa, it won’t be the same. It won’t. We won’t make the same mistakes._

His kisses tasted like promises, and she swallowed them whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Like I said, we've still got an epilogue that will wrap up a few loose ends, but at least these two have finally figured their shit out!
> 
> BTW, I'm making a commitment in 2020 to actually be consistent about replying to comments, because I really cannot say how much I value them. I hope you know how special it is every time one of you takes the time to let me know you like what I'm doing.


	5. Epilogue

**ten years later.**  
**sunspear.**

Princess Meria Stark has three uncles, though she knows there used to be more. But that was long ago, before she was born.

Her favorite is Uncle Gendry. It used to be that he and Aunt Arya traveled all over, from the Iron Islands to the Stormlands and sometimes even across the Narrow Sea, so even though he visited Winterfell irregularly, he _always_ brought the best gifts. He had a knack for choosing interesting things that she could never get in the North, like thick books on Dornish history from Oldtown or brightly-colored silks from Braavos, and once he even gave her a dagger that he forged himself, which Mother only permitted her to carry after she had weeks of lessons from Aunt Arya on how to use it safely. He brought gifts for the twins as well, dolls and sweets for Brianna and strange, beautiful stones for Lya, who has them all lined up on the mantel in her and Brianna’s bedroom and when she is anxious she likes to simply hold them, rubbing her thumb over the smooth surfaces or the craggy crystal centers.

By the time Benjen was born, however, Uncle Gendry had come to stay at Winterfell for good. He said he was sick of traveling. He used to be lord of a keep, too, but he’s long since given it up. _Why look after a castle and lands_ , he likes to say, _when instead I can have fun with you little ones while your mama and papa do all the hard work?_ Aunt Arya still comes and goes as she pleases, sometimes traveling for months at a time, which Meria knows makes everyone a little sad, but especially Uncle Gendry. She tries her best to cheer him up when Arya is gone.

Meria doesn’t like Uncle Bran nearly as much, even though he is her uncle for true, the brother of her mother, and Gendry is only an uncle in name. He and Aunt Arya aren’t even _married_. 

The trouble of it is, Bran is hardly any fun at all. At least Meria doesn’t think he is. Benjen adores him, always trying to climb up onto his lap and throw his arms around Uncle Bran’s neck, always begging him to tell him a story, any story — and it’s true that Bran does seem to know all the best stories. He tells them that he traveled all the way beyond the Wall, with his friends Meera and Jojen Reed and a brave man they called Hodor. He tells them old legends of the North, stories about Bran the Builder and Bael the Bard and even stories the children are probably not supposed to hear about, like the Rat Cook. Sometimes Bran talks about the White Walkers and the army of the dead, but never when Ben is around, for he is too little for such frightening tales.

Once, when Meria asked Uncle Bran to tell her about what happened when the dragon queen came to Westeros, he grew very grim and said she probably ought to speak with her parents about that.

It’s not that she’s entirely in the dark. Mother and Father talk about it sometimes, and Maester Wolkan has taught her about the wars that her parents lived through, about dishonest kings and cruel queens and greedy men who wanted very much to hurt Meria’s family. She knows that her grandfather, grandmother, and two uncles were horribly murdered; that her mother was a hostage and a prisoner of war; and that ultimately Mother and Father had to fight the traitorous House Bolton to win back Winterfell.

After that, she knows that the dragon queen came to Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen was Father’s aunt, and she wanted to rule over them all, but Mother refused to bend the knee. Father protected Mother, but he couldn’t stop the dragon queen from destroying King’s Landing, which used to be the capital, back when Westeros was one kingdom instead of four. 

Mother and Father say that when she is older, they will tell her more about it, and though Meria is curious to know and wishes to understand her parents better, she is a little bit afraid too. She doesn’t like how sad and gray their faces become when they talk about that time, or the way Mother sometimes puts her arm around Father as if she’s protecting him from the memories. So Meria has decided she can wait a little longer. Soon she will be three and ten, practically a woman grown, and maybe then she will be ready to learn.

One of the things she already knows, however, is that Father is the one who killed the dragon queen. That’s why he went away after the war and Mother married Prince Symon of Dorne, who was Meria’s first father, the one who died when she was little.

That’s how Meria has a third uncle, Prince Nymor.

Before this very morning, she’d never met Prince Nymor, and she’s not certain what she imagined him to be like. Mother always told her that Symon was soft-spoken and good-humored, with a gentle temperament that served him well amongst the raucous northerners, so if anything, Meria must’ve imagined Nymor to be much the same, though he was Symon’s elder brother, so perhaps he was gray-haired and maybe with spectacles like Maester Wolkan has to wear sometimes.

She couldn’t have been more wrong. Prince Nymor — Uncle Nymor, as he asked her to call him — may be nearly five and thirty, but he looks much younger than Father, younger even than Uncle Gendry, with far fewer wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and lines cutting across his forehead. He’s boisterous, almost like Brianna, with his emphatic way of speaking and his immediate, easy affection. When he’d seen her and Mother, he’d swept across the hall with a great smile and kissed Mother’s cheek with a smack. Then, cradling Meria’s face in his hands, he exclaimed, “By the gods, you do look just like Symon!”

It had been a little strange, she can’t deny that, and a bit overwhelming, but she’d done her best curtsy and said, “How do you do, Your Grace,” just as Mother had taught her. He’d just waved a hand and told her to call him _Uncle_ and said that he was so glad she’d finally gotten the chance to visit the home of her father.

It’s no secret that Meria had a father before Father, and she’s soaked up all she can about Dorne and Prince Symon, yet at the same time, rarely does anyone speak of it so openly, so matter-of-factly. It is a topic treated with sensitivity, and Meria has never discussed it with her siblings, though she thinks they know; the twins do, at least. Still, it feels _private_ , something that is hers alone, or hers and Mother’s, perhaps, so it surprises her to find she likes the way she was instantly accepted into Nymor’s family, as if he has always known her, always been her uncle, just the same as Gendry or Bran.

After introductions and a few cups of dark, spiced tea, Uncle Nymor had taken them out into a garden in the palace filled with huge, exotic plants in colors Meria could scarcely believe, colors unlike anything she’d ever seen in the North. They’d walked along a short path to a statue garden, and here, she learned, was where her father’s bones had been laid to rest, and Meria had said a little prayer even though there was no heart tree.

Now, she and her mother have been escorted to their rooms to bathe and change before dinner, where there will be more new faces, new names, new family members to know and whom she hopes will accept her as graciously as Nymor has.

Meria has sent away her maids and is simply soaking in her bath when Mother comes through from her adjoining chamber, her hair wet from her own bath and slicked away from her face. She’s wearing a dressing gown that must be Dornish, because Meria’s never seen her in anything so scandalous. The sleeves are long and sheer with trumpet sleeves that end in delicate lace cuffs, and the bottom hem of the dressing gown, finished in yet more lace, ends at Mother’s knees.

“Mother!” Meria giggles. “ _What_ areyou wearing?”

“We’ve been gifted quite the Dornish wardrobes,” Mother says, a bit perturbed. “I’m not certain I can let you out of the room wearing any of it. The gowns are hardly more fit for company than this robe.”

Meria giggles again, allowing her mother to help her out of the bath and offer her a large linen. While Meria dries herself, Mother ventures across the room to Meria’s wardrobe and pulls the doors open to rifle through the gowns inside. “Well,” she says after a moment. “I suppose some of this will do.”

The dress Mother selects for her is lovely, layers and layers of gauzy fabric the color of the sea, which are twisted and draped in such a clever way that Meria only feels a _little_ more exposed than she normally would. Her arms are bare, which is a rare thing in the cool North, and the back neckline of her gown dips somewhat lower than would be appropriate elsewhere, enough to show off the sprinkling of moles at the top of her left shoulder blade. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she is pleased. Though Meria’s never had the talent for sewing that her mother has, she knows enough to appreciate that the dress she is wearing is very well-made.

Mother must admire it too, for she runs her hands along the careful folds of fabric, slightly in awe, before her face lifts and her eyes, a paler blue than Meria’s dress but just as beautiful, meet Meria’s own dark ones in the mirror. 

“You’re getting so grown up,” Mother says, her smile unfolding slowly, something a little sad in it. “My beautiful girl.” 

“Thank you, Mama.”

It’s been years since Meria called her mother Mama, but for some reason, that’s the name that slips out, and rather than frowning at her babyish behavior, Mother looks almost pleased. “Sit down,” she says, guiding her to the dressing table, where another mirror reflects Meria’s face back her. “Let me brush your hair.”

Meria obeys, relishing the feel of the silver comb working carefully through her thick, damp waves. Her mother often tells her that beauty means very little in the grand scheme of things: that beauty can attract trouble as well as devotion, and while it is not a bad thing to care for one’s appearance, it is better to develop one’s mind, skills, and integrity. Even so, her mother often tells her that she is pretty, and Meria finds she agrees. Sometimes she admits she can be rather vain.

Especially when it comes to her hair. The twins have hair like her mother, coppery and bright, certainly lovely, but Meria secretly prefers her own black tresses, which are thick and dark and curly, like Nymor’s hair is, like her father’s must’ve been, like Father’s and Ben’s are.

Meria’s gaze drifts from her own face down to where she can see flashes of her mother in the mirror. In this dressing gown, her scars are apparent: spidery white lines that cross over her chest, that she knows extend all down Mother’s body. Mother would never wear a gown like Meria is wearing, not publicly. To show the top of her back would mean something more than simply showing a few moles.

The first time Meria noticed the scars, she’d been eight or nine, around the time that Benjen was born. Mother was abed in her dressing gown, the babe held to her breast, and Meria saw, for the first time, that her mother’s body had marks on it quite unlike those Meria or the twins had, or any of the women she’d seen in the hot springs. She’d only been a child then, so she’d asked about it without even considering her mother’s feelings, but Mother hadn’t grown angry. She’d simply sighed and told Meria that when she was a girl, she’d been treated badly during the war. Meria still remembers how she’d said, _Wars are especially hard on women and children, and on all the smallfolk_. _That’s why, to be a good ruler, to be a good queen, we must treat war very seriously. It’s not just a game, no matter what anyone may say._

Now, Meria feels Mother’s hand rest gently on her shoulder and hears her sweet, warm voice ask, “How are you feeling? I know it’s already been a lot to take in.”

“I’m … ” Meria thinks about it for a moment, knowing Mother wants a true answer, not simply a courteous one. “I’m happy, I think. I miss everyone at home but I am happy to be here.”

“I’m glad to hear it, and I know Nymor is terribly pleased that you’re here. If you have questions about your father, about Symon, I know he’d be delighted to talk to you about him. He loved Symon, the way you love the twins and Benjen, and he knew him for longer than I did. He wants to share anything he can about him with you. Is that okay?”

Meria lifts a hand to clasp her mother’s on her shoulder. “That’s okay.”

Her mother exhales her relief and sets the comb aside, beginning to pick through the jewelry that Meria brought with her. “The wedding is still a week away, so you’ll have plenty of time to speak with him before then.”

“How long will we stay?”

She doesn’t mean to ask it, but the question slips out despite herself, and she can’t help but notice her mother’s mouth turn down. “I don’t know. I know we planned to stay for a full month, but now … ” She rests a hand atop her stomach. “I’ll have to speak with the Maester.”

On the ship from White Harbor, Mother had complained of aching joints and utter exhaustion, and more than once she’d gotten sick into her bedpan. Ser Brienne and ser Podrick had alternated keeping vigil at her side, for she’d rarely been able to even leave her cabin, but Mother kept telling them that they’d seen her in far worse conditions than this, and that she simply wasn’t used to sea travel. There was no maester aboard the ship but the cook’s wife, who traveled with him, had some experience as a healer, so after two weeks of Mother losing her meals, growing paler and more uncomfortable by the day, the cook’s wife came to speak with her.

The woman had given Mother a knowing look and asked when she last bled. Mother didn’t remember, but her maid said it had been at least two moons, and that Mother had forgone a corset more than once in recent memory due to the excessive tenderness of her breasts. By then even Meria, who knows only the rudimentary facts of such things, understood that Mother was once more with child.

“It’s not certain,” Mother says now, though she doesn’t sound very convinced. She’d been skeptical of the cook’s wife, claiming that she’d been pregnant thrice before and it had _never_ felt like this, but the cook’s wife merely clicked her tongue and said, _Every child is different. Besides, have you ever carried a child while aboard a ship?_ Mother had to admit that she had not.

“The Maester will be able to confirm if there’s a child,” she says, nodding to herself, “and he’ll know whether it will be safe to travel.”

“Do you not want another baby?” Meria asks.

“I’d love nothing more,” Mother says, holding her flat belly once more. “But I’d prefer to wait until I was home again.”

Meria senses that her mother is afraid that if she waits any longer, she will be told not to travel at all. It is a long way from home — a long way from Father and the children. Mother does not like to leave Winterfell at all, and though she makes occasional diplomatic trips outside the North, Meria knows she would not have come this far south were it not for her.

Maybe, Meria tells herself, maybe she will hate Dorne. Maybe Nymor is kind and welcoming, but everyone else will treat her coldly. Maybe the food will make her sick and the humidity will make it impossible to sleep and she will be as eager to get away from here as Mother is.

Then, at least, it will not be so disappointing when they have to go.

*

But of course everything is wonderful. 

Over dinner — which involves plates and plates of delicious, heavily-spiced food that makes Meria’s nose run — Meria meets Nymor’s betrothed. Cerenna Jordayne is perhaps a little older than Mother and strikingly beautiful, with her black hair cut sharply above her shoulders and her strong, straight nose. Unexpectedly, she already has a son, a boy of four and ten with her eyes and her nose who is named Doran Sand.

(Meria knows that _Sand_ means that he’s a bastard, but, as in the North, bastardy here doesn’t seem to be such a scandal. Meria knows from her books that for a long time bastards were thought to be born wicked, but Mother does not tolerate the mistreatment of bastards for no reason but their parentage. Besides, Father’s name before he married was Jon Snow, so he’s a bastard too, and he’s the King in the North!)

Lady Cerenna tells the funniest jokes Meria has ever heard, though she’s not certain she entirely understands them all. Doran is friendly and an easy conversation partner, even if he does laugh at her when she complains about the heat. “At least you’ve learned to dress as the Dornish do, my princess,” he says with a glance at her mother, who wears one of the gowns she brought with her, a light dress for Winterfell but here, markedly heavier than what everyone else is wearing. “I’ve no doubt you wear your Northern furs as beautifully as Her Grace,” says Doran, shooting her a playful grin across the table, “but it would be a shame to lose you to the sun sickness before you’ve had a chance to truly see Dorne.”

She feels herself blushing, but refuses to look away from Doran. “And what does it mean to truly see Dorne?”

“The palace and water gardens are lovely, princess, but there is so much more than this. Would you not like to see the bazaars of Sunspear? Would you not like to visit the cliffs on the coast and to meet more of your father’s people? You must at least see the very spot where Princess Meria Martell defied Rhaenys Targaryen. You are her namesake, no?” He grins again. “Though much prettier.”

Before Meria can answer, dessert arrives, little pockets of flaky pastry layered with honey and nuts, and as Meria devours one, then another, then another, she realizes her eyes are wet and her heart is trembling and she thinks she would give anything to stay. Just for a little longer, she would like to stay.

*

The upcoming wedding brings more and more guests to the palace, a whole host of Dornishmen and Dornishwomen from as far as Starfall. Some of them knew Meria’s father when he was a boy, long before his marriage, and they tell her stories that warm her from within: the time he tried to steal his brother’s favorite horse, the time he and his friends went swimming naked in the sea, the time he insisted on cooking his mother’s birthday dinner himself and nearly burned the kitchen down. In adulthood he found the quietness, the easiness that Mother speaks of, but in his youth, it seems he was as wild as Father’s friends among the Free Folk. She likes to think about that.

Between sumptuous meals with these new friends and last-minute dress fittings with Cerenna’s own seamstress and tours of the palace halls led by Doran, Meria finds herself seeing very little of her mother, whose nausea has waned but whose exhaustion has not. On their third day in Sunspear, Mother tells Meria that the Maester has said that she is indeed with child, but by that point, it is hardly a surprise. She retires immediately after dinner most evenings, and sometimes even sleeps through luncheon.

On the day of the wedding, however, Meria’s mother appears in her doorway looking bright and cheerful, color in her cheeks and only a faint shadow under her eyes. She must’ve spoken with a seamstress, because she has acquired an emerald-colored dress in the Dornish style, though its long, billowing sleeves and the shimmering golden capelet around her shoulders keep all of her scars hidden. She looks so beautiful — so majestic — that Meria cannot help but be proud to be her daughter. 

The lady’s maid is still working on Meria’s hair, twisting and braiding it into a style far more complicated than she’s ever worn at home, but her mother simply watches, voicing no objection as the lady’s maid moves her swift and nimble fingers through Meria’s waves.

When it is time to dress, Mother once again helps her into her gown. The dress was chosen strategically, but it is also terribly lovely: it combines Dornish cuts with Northern colors, made of thin silk that appears to be blue in some lights and gray in others. The ruffled sleeves sit just off her shoulders, and the bodice sports another ruffle, this one a pearly white. When her mother finishes tying the laces at the back of the dress, Meria considers herself in the mirror for a moment, surprised to realize that she almost looks like she could belong here. The thought feels a little like a betrayal and she avoids her mother’s eyes.

At the wedding feast, after all the handfasting and vows are done, Meria dances with Doran and Nymor and ser Podrick at least twice each, and even though Mother tells her to have no more than one glass of wine, Lady Cerenna — Princess Cerenna now, the ruling princess of Dorne — sneaks her a second, smaller glass while Mother is busy being twirled about by Uncle Nymor.

“Your mother says you’ll be leaving us soon,” Cerenna says, leaning closer to Meria so that a few locks of her loose curls fall across her eyes.

It’s true. Mother told her just last night. In two short days they will begin their journey back to Winterfell, and though Meria misses her family, misses her home, she wishes with all her heart that the hours between now and her departure pass as slowly as possible.

“I wish I didn’t have to,” Meria admits quietly. Then, guiltily, she adds, “Not that I don’t want to go home. I miss my family dearly. All I meant was, I’ve had such a lovely time here and you’ve all been so — ” 

But Princess Cerenna seems unconcerned by Meria’s confession, simply waving a hand back and forth as if to bat it away. “It’s all right, I understand. You know, if your mother would allow it, we would be honored for you to stay a while longer. Nymor has been waiting to meet you for years. Many of us have.”

“R-really?”

“Oh, yes. I first met Nymor not long after his brother passed. He was heartbroken. But he knew Symon had left behind a little girl, and that was a solace for him, that someone of Symon’s blood still lived and breathed.” It is a strange thought: Symon’s blood, every bit as alive in her as the blood of the wolf. “Your mother has sent updates over the years, as well — to let Nymor know she was marrying again, of course, but also to tell him about you, about the child of Symon. Nymor loved his brother dearly and I daresay after a few short days he loves you just as much.”

Biting her lip, Meria watches the eddy of red wine in her cup as she gives it a swirl. She doesn’t know if she wants to be loved simply because she is the child of a man she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t even know how much she can truly be considered the child of Symon. She doesn’t remember him at all. For most of her life, she’s called a different man her father. Still, she _does_ want Nymor’s love. She wants the love of her Dornish family.

Blood ties are useful politically. Meria isn’t stupid. She knows this. Yet she would like to be more than just a political connection between her mother’s land and her father’s. She would like to be known and cared for, the way her own mother cares for her distant kin, like her cousin Robin and Great Uncle Edmure’s little ones, and even the connections who are not blood, like the Tarlys, whose youngest son may even foster at Winterfell when he gets a little older.

“I would like to stay,” Meria says. “I’d like to Uncle Nymor better — and you, and everyone. I just don’t think Mother would be okay with that. She doesn’t like letting her children too far out of sight.”

The princess laughs, a low, throaty chuckle, and she gestures toward where Doran is clumsily dancing with a small girl, the young daughter of one of the wedding guests. “I can sympathize,” Cerenna says. “I’m a mother too. After so many years of turmoil, it is difficult not to want to keep those most precious to us close.” Sighing, she offers another sidelong smile to Meria, her teeth gleaming in the candlelight. “Still, you will be the Queen in the North one day, although, gods be good, not for many, many years. But eventually your time and your duty will have to lie entirely with the North. It would be good for you to know what you can of Dorne while you still have the freedom to do so.”

One of Cerenna’s cousins approaches and asks the bride for a dance, so with one last wink at Meria, the princess of Dorne disappears back into the crowd.

Meria is still mulling over Cerenna’s words when her mother approaches her, looking so beautiful with her red hair and glowing cheeks that many around her cannot keep their eyes from her, but Mother pays them no mind, flashing Meria a silly smile and dropping into the seat beside her with a sigh. “It’s been a lovely wedding,” she says, “but my feet ache. I used to be able to dance all night.”

“At your wedding, you managed to convince Father to dance with you for hours.”

“Do you remember that? You were still so little.”

“I remember some, but Aunt Arya is the one who told me about that. I do remember Uncle Gendry holding my hand in the godswood and bribing me with sweets so I wouldn’t cry. I remember you had flowers in your hair.”

All at once, the way Mother’s expression softens almost makes Meria want to weep. She loves being the oldest child, practically grown, and she loves being here in Dorne, and she loves the way Cerenna let her have just a splash more of the sweet Dornish wine, but some unbearably tender part of her would like to be four again and snuggled up between her parents on their big bed. Part of her knows that the simplicity, the ease of her youth has already begun to fade. Princess Cerenna had spoken true: one day, Meria will be Queen in the North, and her mother’s duties will fall to her, and childhood will be a distant, hazy dream.

Mother stifles a yawn, interrupting Meria’s thoughts. 

“Time for bed?” Meria asks.

“I’m afraid so. I’ll sneak out while I still can. Brienne can escort you back to your room when you’re ready.” She presses a kiss to Meria’s cheek and turns to go, but Meria catches her sleeve. 

“Wait. I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t wish to stay at the feast?”

“I’m tired too. I’ll come up to bed.”

With Brienne as their escort, they walk arm in arm through the halls to the guest quarters, and when they arrive at their adjoining rooms, Meria marches past her own doorway in order to follow her mother into her chamber. Mother gives her a surprised look, but she doesn’t object, and as Meria takes a seat at the table and pours herself a cup of water, Mother simply goes about her evening routine, removing her jewelry and unpinning her hair, stepping out of her dress and pulling another frilly dressing gown on over her shift. Pouring fresh water into a basin, she washes her face and rinses her mouth, and everything about her movements, from the way her fingers comb out her long braid to the way she pats her face three times with a clean linen to dry it, is comforting and familiar, the same motions she’s surely made every night for as long as Meria can remember.

When she is done, she turns to Meria. “Do you need help with your dress, sweetheart?” 

Meria nods, standing up and turning around so that her mother can undo the laces she’d tied hours before. With gentle fingers, she tugs the dress open at the back and Meria allows it slip down her shoulders, onto the floor in a heap of sweat-dampened silk.Though Meria is tempted to leave it there, she does as her mother did and picks it up, laying it out for the maids to deal with tomorrow.

“Did you have a nice time?”

“Yes,” says Meria truthfully. “It was wonderful. I wish we could have bards come to Winterfell more often. _Good_ ones.”

Mother’s lips twitch. “So do I.”

“How about you? How are you feeling?”

She touches her stomach, as she has been wont to do ever since the cook’s wife spoke with her, but she seems less shaken by the news than before. The prospect of returning home has no doubt cheered her up, though Meria worries the sea travel will wear her out again. Maybe Father or Uncle Gendry can meet them in White Harbor. That would cheer them both up.

“I’m all right. Tired still, worse even than with the twins, but at least I can keep food down now. Usually.” Meria accepts her mother’s soft embrace, the kiss to her cheek. “Now, my love, I have to bid you goodnight or else I fear I’ll fall asleep right here on my feet.”

When her mother’s arms release her, however, Meria doesn’t leave. Instead she feels her heart climb up her throat until she blurts out, “Can I sleep here tonight?” 

Her mother’s lips part with surprise, her eyes first going wide and then searching Meria’s face — looking, no doubt, for signs of distress or hurt. “Of course you can. Is something the matter?”

Yes. No. Meria doesn’t know how to answer, so she shakes her head.

A contemplative expression crosses her mother’s face. “Come, let me unpin your hair.”

Sitting on the bed, Meria bites her tongue as she feels soft fingers begin to gently uncoil the braids still perched atop her head, her mother’s deft hands unraveling the plaits one by one, collecting a pile of hairpins that sits at Meria’s side.

“You know you can always talk to me,” says her mother as she gathers all of Meria’s hair into a low knot at the back of her neck. “About anything. You can always be honest, and I will try to always be honest with you.”

With that, her mother’s weight lifts off the bed and she begins to move through the room, silently snuffing out candles until everything is cast in shadows. Meria crawls under the covers and squeezes her eyes closed. Only when she feels her mother settling in beside her does she open them again.

Her mother is watching her carefully; even in the darkness, she can see the gleam of her gaze.

“I want to stay here,” Meria whispers. “Just for the month, like we planned.”

“I see.” She can hear the frown in her mother’s voice. “Very well. Perhaps if I speak with the Maester … ”

“No, Mother. You should go home to Father and the children. But I would like to stay.”

A sharp inhale, and then Meria feels a cold hand clutch her own. “Alone? So far from home? Meria, you know why I can’t let you do that. I’ve seen for myself what can happen when you are alone in the south.” Her voice is tight. “I would never do that to you.”

“I wouldn’t be alone. Prince Nymor isn’t a Lannister, he’s my family. This isn’t King’s Landing.”

Mother’s grip tightens and another hand reaches out to cup Meria’s face. “I can’t do it, my love. I believe Nymor is a good man, I do, but sometimes even family will hurt you.” Meria sighs, knowing she won’t be able to persuade her, but then her mother speaks again, her voice soft and wary. “Are you unhappy in the North?”

Meria shakes her head, hoping her mother can see it, and says with vehemence, “Of course not. I am of the North. I love the North. It’s just that I want to know this place too. I want to know this side of my family … of myself … before it’s too late.”

“Too late? What do you mean?”

“I’m almost three and ten. Soon I will be a woman, and not just any woman, the heir to the Northern throne. You will find me a man to marry, and then I will have children of my own.”

The sound her mother makes then wrenches something inside of Meria. It’s not quite a gasp, not quite a sob. “Meria,” her mother says, and Meria can hear the tears in her voice. “Listen to me. You are still a girl. There’s still a lot of time before any of that. I was fourteen when I first married, but that was far, far too young. And you know, you _must_ know, I would never marry you to anyone against your will.”

She can’t help but reach out to wipe away some of her mother’s tears. “I know, Mama.” The name slips out again, and this time it feels less shameful. “I know you will always do what’s best for me, and that when it is time, you will help me find a good husband who one day will rule the North by my side. I want that. I want the North for the rest of my life. I am a Stark and I always want to be a Stark.”

She squints her eyes in the hopes of stopping herself from crying too. “Shouldn’t I take the time to know the other part of me, though? I know that Father was never able to do that. He said that all his life there was a missing part of him. He told me that himself. He’d want this for me, and you know Symon would want it too.”

For a long moment the room is silent save her mother’s trembling breaths, her occasional sniffle, and then, pulling Meria close, Mother says, “I’ll stay then. I’ll stay with you.”

“I don’t think you should.” Meria would love nothing more than to keep her mother by her side, but she knows that her place is at home, with the rest of the family. Meria knows her mother won’t rest easy until she is back within the walls of Winterfell. “With the baby, you should go home as soon as you can.”

“No, listen to me. If you stay, then I stay with you. That’s the only option. I won’t abandon you here.”

It’s not abandonment, Meria wants to say. It’s just a month with her family, hardly any time at all, in the long run. She’s not a hostage or a prison of war; she won’t be married off or sold or mistreated. Dorne is an ally of the North, a friend, and there is no doubt in Meria’s mind that Prince Nymor can be trusted.

However, hearing the anguish in her mother’s voice, Meria merely hums her agreement. “All right, Mama. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”

*

Late in the night, she feels the mattress shift, feels a weight lift away, and hears the soft patter of slippered feet on the stone floor. She tries to open her eyes, to reach out for her mother and make sure that everything is all right, but the pull of her dreams is stronger and she slips back into unconsciousness, mind and mouth still fuzzy with her first taste of wine.

*

The sun is streaming through the window when she awakes, golden rays that fall across her face and force her eyes open, blinking away the glow behind her eyelids.

At the table, she sees that a breakfast of fruits and rolls has been laid out, and her mother and Brienne sit there conversing quietly, each with a steaming cup of tea cradled in her hands. A few words reach Meria’s ears: _King’s Landing_ and _can’t_ and _should_ and _Jon_. From this angle she can’t see the expression on her mother’s face, but she can imagine it: brow furrowed, mouth pursed in worry. Meria never should have said anything about staying. She’s only causing more trouble.

Brienne is the first to notice that she’s awake. “Princess.” She sets her cup down on the table and stands, offering an unnecessary bow, but Brienne has always expressed her affection within the bounds of formality. Meria doesn’t mind.

“Sweetheart.” When her mother turns in her seat, there is no sign of turmoil to be seen. She looks serious, thoughtful, but not as if she’s truly upset, not like last night. “Come, eat. We have much to discuss.”

Warily, Meria approaches, loading up a plate with orange slices and chunks of mango and a few of the soft, sweet Dornish rolls she has come to love, all the while watching her mother, searching for a clue as to what she may be thinking, but the Queen in the North is a notoriously difficult person to read and even her daughter is not always successful.

She decides to speak first. “I’m sorry I asked to stay. It was selfish of me.”

Mother reaches across the table to take her hand. “No, it wasn’t. Please don’t think that. I always want you to feel you can come to me with what you’re thinking. It’s just that what you’re asking for, it scares me.”

“I know.”

“I loved my parents dearly, and I grieve that you will never know them, but they made mistakes with me and my siblings that ended up putting us in danger. I lost them far too young because they were too trusting. _I_ was too trusting.”

Meria nibbles at her sweet roll, barely tasting it. She has seen the statues of her grandfather and dead uncles down in the crypt; she has seen the portrait of her grandmother as a young woman that Great Uncle Edmure sent Mother as a wedding gift. It is terrifying to think that her mother was barely older than her when all of these tragedies befell her. 

What would she do, if Mother and Father were killed, if Benjen and the twins went missing or died? Would she ever be able to let her own child out of her sight? She understands her mother’s choices, even if she is not entirely happy with them.

“I want to protect you,” Mother says, and Meria nods her understanding, but then she continues, “but I don’t want to keep you from living your life. I don’t want to hide you away in a tower and never give you the chance to learn who you are and what you are capable of. My aunt Lysa was a mother like that, and it did her son no good. Brienne has rightfully pointed out that I am perhaps being overprotective.”

At this, Brienne interjects, “Not overprotective, Your Grace. Your fears are perfectly understandable. I merely wished to remind you that Princess Meria need not be alone. I will stay by her side.” To Meria, she says, “I’ve known you your whole life. You’re the closest thing I have to a child of my own. I will never allow any harm to come to you.”

Touched, Meria smiles a watery acknowledgment at Brienne, and her mother lays a soft hand on Brienne’s shoulder. 

“Thank you, Brienne,” she says. “You are a true friend.” Shifting her attention back to Meria, Mother says, “I will begin the return trip to Winterfell tomorrow, but, if it’s still your wish, you can stay here one more month. Brienne will stay with you and coordinate your protection for the remainder of your visit and your trip home. I’ll leave a dozen Stark guards under her command. Princess Cerenna can ensure you’re properly supervised and have everything you need. Is this acceptable?”

Meria dashes around the table and flings herself into her mother’s arms, heedless of the tea that Brienne hastily pushes aside to prevent it from being upturned on anyone’s lap. “More than acceptable. Thank you.” A thought occurs to her. “Who will guard you on the way home?”

“Ser Podrick is more than capable of protecting Her Grace,” says Brienne.

“I’ll take the rest of the guards too.” Sighing, Mother tucks a loose strand of hair behind Meria’s ear, a soft and sad look in her eyes, but then she grins and tweaks Meria’s nose. “Your father is going to be furious with me.”

Meria laughs. “No, he won’t. Tell him what I told you. He’ll understand.”

“I hope so. It was already hard enough for him to let the two of us go away without him.”

“Besides,” Meria says, “he’ll be so happy when you tell him about the baby that he can’t possibly get angry with you.”

That makes Brienne chuckle. “She has a point, Your Grace.”

Meria cuddles closer into her mother’s embrace, letting her familiar warmth of her, the scent of her skin, soothe the flickers of fear that linger at the thought of being away from her for so long. She has to do this — for herself, for Symon, for Dorne, for Winterfell. For the queen she will someday be.

“I love you,” she says softly, and her mother holds her even tighter.

“I love you too. I want you to have this chance to know this place and these people, but … promise you’ll come home to me, to all of us, soon.” 

Meria doesn’t hesitate. “Always,” she says. “I’ll _always_ come home.”

It is the easiest promise she’s ever made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it! Thanks for reading, everyone! I so appreciate all of your comments and kudos.
> 
> The kids are Meria, Lyarra, Brianna, and Benjen, and the new baby is going to be Robb if it’s a boy and Jeyne if it’s a girl. Also, yes, I do imagine Meria and Doran eventually marrying, so that another Stark queen lends her name to a bastard (or at least their children) and we get a longer-lived North/Dorne alliance in Winterfell. I also think one of the Stark kids will eventually marry a Tarly kid, though no idea who.
> 
> In case it wasn’t clear, Arya and Gendry are still together, but they never married and he’s come to accept that she needs her freedom. She always comes home again, and even if they never have children, he happily dotes on Jon and Sansa’s kids.
> 
> I couldn’t figure out a way to get it in here, but Robin and Rufus make it work. I imagine that eventually Robin either appoints one of Sansa’s kids as his heir or one of Edmure’s Tully-Frey brood (and I do imagine he and Roslin have a brood by this point). I don’t think Robin cares that much about the Arryn name living on tbh. Or you can pretend Harrold Hardyng exists in this universe, if you’d prefer that.
> 
> Also: Bran and Meera are on good terms again and correspond regularly. She visits sometimes, and they always sit together at the heart tree for a bit and talk about Jojen, Hodor, and Summer.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!
> 
> I actually feel extremely bad about inventing a character just to kill him off for my own shipping purposes, but I really want Symon to be more than just a plot device. He was an important part of Sansa's life and the father of her child, and she's not going to forget that just because Jon is back.
> 
> In the next chapter, Jon will meet Meria, who, btw, is named after Meria Martell, the reigning Princess of Dorne during Aegon's conquest who refused to kneel to the Targaryens.


End file.
